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UK Action on Hunger in Africa

Related pages: Africa regional homepage | Millennium Development Goal 1: Poverty and Hunger | Q and A on hunger and safety nets


images of african women drinking, gathering food, carrying foodOver 30 million people will need relief to meet their food needs in Africa in 2006. Countries in Southern Africa and the more north easterly parts (for example, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia) are worst affected – accounting for nearly 24 million people in need.

Drought, disease and conflict cause hunger - but even in years of good rains, millions still go hungry.

We call these the chronically hungry – those that cannot get enough to eat at any time. Having no job or income, being unable to farm effectively or being chronically sick or disabled all play a key role in chronic hunger.

What are the challenges?

Sudan women waiting in food queueThere are many challenges ahead for DFID and for African Governments.

In particular, we need to help Africa Government’s develop the technical know-how to manage such programmes. In turn, we need to ensure that the international community – including ourselves – can provide long-term technical and financial support.

At the same time, we need to ensure we continue to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of humanitarian aid delivery, recognising that there will always be a continued role for emergency assistance, either for genuine humanitarian crises or as a stop-gap measure in places where more appropriate safety-nets have still to scale up.

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What is the UK doing?

We are providing emergency relief for life threatening situations. Since 2005, DFID has provided:

In cash terms, since early 2005:

The UK spent £76 million in total on humanitarian aid in Sudan, covering a range of interventions in food, water, health and shelter. We have committed £63 million for 2006, £49 million of which was provided through a common fund.

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Breaking the Cycle – Safety Nets

Pepper farmer near DiffaDroughts often increase the number of people facing chronic hunger over the longer term. For example, when faced with hunger, people sell livestock, farming equipment or land. This helps people survive day to day but makes it harder to escape the poverty trap over the longer-term.

We can break this cycle of dependency by providing small payments of cash and/or food or fertiliser and seeds (depending on circumstance) on a well-timed, regular and long term basis to the neediest.

These ‘safety nets’ help people feed themselves and also prevent them from selling assets like oxen and cows, or their land in times of crisis and help them recover their assets in good times. So safety nets protect people from shocks and extreme poverty.

But they can also help people become more productive – through providing cash for people to buy livestock, even rent labour to help them farm, send their children to school and get access to better health services. In some case, people are given cash in exchange for providing labour to public works programmes.

These help build community infrastructure like community roads, wells or new classrooms for schools. This benefits the poorest by giving them a cash or food grant and benefits the community by providing much needed facilities.

Q and A on hunger and safety nets

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Making a difference

Ugandan boy carrying foodIn Ethiopia, we have given £52 million so far to support the Productive Safety Nets Programme. This helps support 7.2 million people who had previously depended on emergency relief – such as food aid – every year.

These are people who had previously depended on emergency relief - such as food aid - every year. This effort will be scaled up to support 8.24 million people in 2006.

Safety nets make a real difference. People are now buying assets that will help them out of poverty over the longer term, such as sheep and goats. And the public works component is helping put in place vital community infrastructure such as schools, access road and springs for clean water. Being Government-managed, the safety net is also building the capacity and the responsibility of Government to respond to the needs of its poorest population.

Increasing Safety Nets in Africa

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 - in particular, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Zambia, and Lesotho.

For example, we have committed £120 million to safety nets and social protection in Kenya over ten years. Around two thirds of this will finance the proposed ‘Hunger Safety Net Programme’. This will provide cash transfers for a fixed period of three years to 300,000 people in the drought affected northern areas. It is hoped that the programme will be rolled out to 1.5 million by year 4. (We will also be supporting a pilot cash transfers programme for households with high numbers of orphans and vulnerable children).

In Zambia, a small pilot safety net in Zambia is promising as a model for a national programme 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 $33 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.

This approach is growing in popularity too in Malawi and the Government is currently rethinking its national strategy.

Related case study:

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Early Warning and Vulnerability Information Systems

Ethiopian women

Image courtesy of US Government

Reducing hunger is not just about changing the way we respond to it – but understanding hunger better - knowing when to respond and what the most appropriate interventions are.

DFID’s £4 million External link, opens in new windowRegional Hunger and Vulnerability Programme in Southern Africa aims to help national governments develop the technical know-how to manage effective information systems and provide a forum for lesson learning across the region.

The programme aims to help develop national vulnerability information systems. These can tell us how many people are vulnerable, what they are vulnerable to and options on how to respond (through safety nets, emergency assistance), and when its right to use food or cash in either context without risk.

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More information

Last updated: 01 November 2007