Hunger question and answers

Back to MDG 1 homepage | UK action on hunger (Feb 2006)

Q. How many Africans need help to meet their food needs this year?

A. Around 30 million people will not have enough to eat and will need emergency aid, such food and other forms of support for water and health, to help them through 2006. The worst affected areas are southern Africa and the northeast in Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia – accounting for around 24 million in need (according to UN sources).

The Guardian report: 40m in sub-Saharan Africa need emergency food aid, says UN (Feb, 2006)
Developments Magazine feature: Cash or food?
World Food Programme Africa Hunger Alert

Q. What are the Causes of Hunger?

A. In many cases, drought reduces harvests, pasture and water supplies – making it difficult for people to get enough food and water. But other shocks, like epidemics or conflicts, also affect people's access to food.

That said, many people go hungry even if rains and circumstances are normal – or even good. These people are the chronically hungry – those that can not get enough to eat at any time. Chronic hunger has many causes including, for example, having no job or income, or anybody to help farm or no land, or being chronically sick (for example, those living with HIV or AIDS) or disabled, or in many cases, living in marginal areas where rainfall and land are not good.

Q. What are safety nets?

A. Safety nets describe programmes that are designed to - at the very least - protect people from the worst effects of poverty. They do this by providing - in some way – income or in kind transfers (such as food) to the neediest.

Although safety nets help protect people, they can also help get people out of poverty in the longer-term. There is evidence to show that safety nets are productive – families often put their children back in school, and/or buy assets (like farming tools, seeds, and livestock) that help them to produce and earn more over time.

Safety nets are a form of what is called ‘social protection’.

Q. What kinds of safety nets are there?

A. Safety nets can include any of the following:

Delivering regular small cash payments to people, or regular food.
Prices subsidies. This is where a staple food like bread or wheat, for example, is sold at a fixed low price so that even the poorest can buy it.
Public works programmes – these schemes aim to guarantee employment for people. They often pay below market wages so that only the poorest apply.
School vouchers or scholarships.
Fee waivers for health care services.
Heating in cold climates.

All these interventions – no matter how different – transfer income in one way or another to needy people. In this way they help redistribute resources in society to the most needy.

Q. How will safety nets help us reduce hunger in Africa?

A. When faced with hunger people sell assets, such as livestock, farming equipment and/or land. This helps people survive day to day and feed themselves but it makes it harder to escape the poverty trap over the longer-term. This is because people have had to sell the very things they need for their future survival. In this way, hunger forces people to mortgage their future.

Emergency relief helps to save lives – as it is designed to – but it cannot help people get back lost or sold assets. This is a reason why so many people stay dependent on relief every year.

Safety nets can help break this cycle of dependency. This is because they provide small payments of cash and/or food or fertiliser and seeds (depending on needs) on a well-timed, regular and long-term basis to the neediest. This helps people feed themselves, and prevents them from selling assets like oxen and cows.

Over time, safety nets can help people become more productive. People may use their cash to buy livestock, even rent labour to help them farm, send their children to school and get access to better health services. Where cash is given in exchange for participating in public works programmes, the whole community can also benefit from infrastructure such as access roads, wells or new classrooms for schools.

The key to safety nets in reducing hunger is long-term, predictable support - it is this which is showing a development outcome.

Q. How do we decide which kind of safety net should be used in a country?

A. These kind of decisions are made in country and in partnership with all stakeholders – those that will support and those that will benefit from such programmes.

When we are addressing hunger, we have to be sure that the safety net will cover needs. This usually means a safety net that is targeted to the very poorest and delivers regular and reliable amounts of cash and or food – depending on the resource available and which will have the greatest impact.

For example, even when food is available at reasonable prices in local markets, people can still go hungry because they have too little money to buy it. In these cases, cash is often the appropriate response. It gives people themselves the choice to spend money on what they actually need – and they are obviously in the best position to judge these needs.

Providing food aid in situations like this can actually swamp markets and depress prices. This can further reduce income for poor farmers and depress production of food in the longer term.

But in other cases, food can be the best option. For example, when food is not available on the market, or people are isolated or distant from markets, cash would be of little use in an emergency. Food aid would be better.

Q. What is the point in providing money to people so they can buy food – why don’t we do what others do and just give the food they need?

A. Regular, reliable and long term transfers of cash to the chronically food insecure appears to be more effective than food - when market conditions allow. Cash gives people more choice about what they eat and what they invest in.

Without the regular cash, the chronically food insecure sell a lot of their production at harvest time to buy other essential food and non food items such as medicines etc.

The problem is that these people then need to buy food later in the year when the prices are high (before the harvest) – something they generally cannot afford. Food gaps falling under the annual cycle of seasonal hunger is usually met with food aid – good for staving off malnutrition but not good for helping people to escape the poverty trap.

But pilot cash transfer projects in Zambia show that if people know they are going to get cash for the next three years, they spend their money to invest productively where possible. So a person will use their cash to buy seeds and hire labour and farm their land. This means they tend to produce more.

But because they have the cash, they do not sell their harvest but keep it back for home consumption. This means they are able to last longer in the ‘hungry season’ (the months between when your own supplies run out and the next harvest is due). Over time, people can build up other assets like livestock. In this way – cash can actually protect the poorest from the highs and lows of the market.

Other benefits include the fact that cash is often less costly – this means we can meet more peoples needs than we could under food. It also makes such programmes more affordable for African Governments in the long term.

Q. Shouldn’t the Government of the country be responsible for feeding the hungry people that live there?

A. Yes – if it is within their capacity and is affordable. There has been a tendency for some countries to use emergency appeals (which brings international finances) for food gaps – even when the food needs have been largely predictable and chronic. But if a problem is predictable, it needs predictable resources to address it.

This is why we are supporting African governments, where appropriate, to develop national safety nets. These programmes require a lot of staff and technical expertise. As these are often the very poorest we need to be able to help Governments achieve this, supporting their technical needs, helping them to create strong institutions and providing long-term predictable finances from our side.

We need to also recognise that sometimes the scale of hunger is beyond a country’s ability to respond, or was completely unpredictable, as in many humanitarian crises. In these cases, it is the whole of the International Community’s responsibility to help.

Q. How many African countries is the UK supporting to develop safety nets?

A. If we are talking about direct support, then Ethiopia is our primary focus where we support the national productive safety nets programme in Ethiopia. We have contributed £43 million since 2005 and will increase our yearly support to the programme to £30 million.

We are working with African governments and the international community to help develop safety net programmes of sufficient size to meet the needs of those affected by chronic hunger. We are committed to scaling up safety nets in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Zambia, and Lesotho.

A small pilot safety net in Zambia is promising as a model for a national programme for one million people (the number of Zambians surviving on less than 1400 calories a day). The pilot suggests that even small amounts of cash – around $17 per person per year – help people feed themselves but also provides enough in many cases for people to invest in their production, buy essential medicines and send their children to school.

But many more countries in Africa are supporting safety nets – ranging from old age pensions in Namibia and South Africa to national programmes to address orphans and other vulnerable children throughout Africa.

For more information about safety nets and hunger in Africa, contact Joanne Raisin