Community Resilience in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa
Extremely poor people, Concern believes, have few assets or achieve little return on the assets they own. They cannot escape extreme pov- erty because of structural inequalities and because of risks and vulner- abilities. Inverting these problems or obstacles allows us to envision desired outcomes: asset building and maintenance, equality, and resil- ience–which is a necessary precondition for helping people exit extreme poverty and hunger.
Learning from Tahoua Region, Niger In Niger, where Concern has been working for over a decade, more than 300,000 children are treated for malnutrition and between 1 million and 3 million people suffer from food insecurity on average each year. The livelihoods of the poorest are under enormous pressure from con- stant environmental degradation, advanced desertification, regular pest invasions and inadequate response to shorter recurrent drought cycles. Repetitive shocks have impoverished rural households. Chronic malnu- trition is endemic and has increased over the last 20 years. One in three harvests is generally poor. Farmers and agro-pastoralists are the most affected as they often cannot meet their food needs for the five- month hunger period between May and September.
Between April 2010 and September 2012, Concern responded to several nutrition crises in this region while conducting three research projects over the course of three hunger seasons: April–December 2010 (Aker et al. 2011), May–December 2011 (Aker and Nene 2012), and July–September 2012 (Bliss 2012). These interventions and research studies focused on the impact of cash transfers on both nutritional and wider poverty outcomes. A deeper inquiry into the link between cash transfers and nutritional outcomes led to these insights from Niger:
1. Cash transfers seem to improve nutritional outcomes in the short term because they lead to more frequent meals for children and more legume consumption. A large portion of cash transfers are spent on household food. Clearly, food expenditures depend on the availability of food. Therefore, whether food or cash is needed depends on local conditions.
2. If the goal of a program is to improve or maintain nutritional status, cash transfers should be integrated with other interventions that address the causes of malnutrition and food insecurity.
3. Nutrition and food security indicators such as the number of hun- ger days, dietary diversity scores, or the global acute malnutrition rate should be developed and monitored to track cash transfers’ many uses and to measure the success of the program.
MAURITANIA MALI SENEGAL NIAMEY
BURKINA FASO
CONCERN’S PROGRAM AREAS IN NIGER, CHAD, ETHIOPIA, AND KENYA
Sahel Highlands
Arid and Semi-Arid Lands Concern’s Country Offices Concern’s Program Areas
Source: Concern Worldwide based on official maps. 40 Building Community Resilience to Undernutrition | Chapter 04 | 2013 Global Hunger Index Nyanza NAIROBI N’DJAMENA NIGERIA
SOUTH SUDAN
Dar Sila DJIBOUTI South Wollo Zone ADDIS ABABA
ETHIOPIA Wolayta Zone
Moyale KENYA SOMALIA NIGER CHAD Tahoua Region SUDAN ERITREA
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