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Oxfam Briefing Paper


Causing Hunger
an overview of the food
crisis in Africa
For people to be hungry in Africa in the 21st century is neither
inevitable nor morally acceptable. The worlds emergency
response requires an overhaul so that it delivers prompt,
equitable, and effective assistance to people suffering from lack
of food. More fundamentally, governments need to tackle the
root causes of hunger, which include poverty, agricultural
mismanagement, conflict, unfair trade rules, and the
unprecedented problems of HIV/AIDS and climate change. The
promised joint effort of African governments and donors to
eradicate poverty must deliver pro-poor rural policies that
prioritise the needs of marginalised rural groups such as small-
holders, pastoralists, and women.
Executive Summary
We used to have a big farm five hectares. We sold it one hectare at a time
to pay to live. Now we cant cultivate any more...We dont have food
because there is no-one to go and find food: my eldest children are dead.
Before, I was able to work, but now we stay with hunger because there is
nothing I can do. We miss our land.
Milembe Mwandu, Shinyanga, Tanzania, April 2006
In 1960 Oxfam helped set up the Freedom from Hunger Campaign with the
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). It was the first
attempt to address the problem of food insecurity with something more than
sacks of food aid for the hungry. The campaign set out to involve developing
countries in analysing the causes of food crises and malnutrition, and to find
sustainable solutions; in short, to enable people to grow or earn enough to
feed themselves.
Forty-six years later, that worthy intention has plainly not been fulfilled in all
parts of the world. While conditions vary greatly across Africa, across Sub
Saharan Africa as a whole thirty-three per cent of Africans are under-
nourished, compared with 17 per cent of people in developing countries as a
whole. The proportion rises to 55 per cent in Central Africa. 1 The average
1980s. 2
Another failure is on the horizon. The commitment made by governments to
be met in Africa at current rates of progress. 3
These failures stem in part from the fact that, despite the promises of 1960
and many others made since, emergency aid, and food aid in particular, has
remained the chief instrument to address food crises. Food aid does save
lives, but it does not offer long-term solutions, and at worst it may
exacerbate food insecurity. This is well known; yet spending on
humanitarian aid has risen substantially, while aid for agricultural production
in Sub Saharan Africa dropped by 43 per cent between 1990-92 to 2000-02.
And neither African nor rich-country governments have done enough to
tackle the root causes of hunger. We must now face the fact that we are
dealing with food crises in Africa that may, in part, be blamed on the
developmental inadequacies of our responses to earlier ones.
In mitigation, some of the causes of the current devastating food
emergencies facing Africa could not have been foreseen 46 years ago.
HIV/AIDS is exacting a terrifying toll on one of Africas key resources for food
production people. By 2020, a fifth of the agricultural workforce in southern
African countries will have been claimed by AIDS. 4
Climate change is another unprecedented threat to food security. This will
particularly affect the most vulnerable smallholders and nomadic
pastoralists who are reliant on rain-fed agriculture. Researchers have
credibly predicted that 55 to 65 milllion more Africans will be at risk of
hunger by the 2080s, as a result of a global temperature rise of less than
2.5C. 5

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Most striking, however, is the deadly impact of Africas conflicts, which are
the cause of more than half the continents food crises. In every country that
has suffered a prolonged food emergency, war or civil strife has played a
major part. Although African governments have a responsibility to protect
their populations, there is persistent failure to do so, as witnessed in
northern Uganda, or even complicity in violence as occurred in Darfur.
According to the FAO, the proportion of human-induced food emergencies
has more than doubled over the last 14 years. 6 But what humans have
broken, humans can mend. Oxfam firmly believes that the hunger and
starvation seen in much of Africa in this first decade of the 21st century are
no more inevitable than they are morally acceptable.
The world has the resources and know-how to guarantee the right to food,
which is enshrined in United Nations (UN) conventions. 7 And this is not a
side-issue: malnutrition is crippling to both individuals and society. At its
most extreme, hunger kills, with young children and babies often the first to
die. More commonly it weakens people, draining them of the energy that
they need to work, and making them more prone to disease. Extreme
malnutrition in children reduces school performance and causes long-term
brain damage, which affects their future livelihoods and reduces economic
growth 8 . The provision of proper nutrition and food security is central to
achieving many of the Millenium Development Goals, such as reducing
poverty and child mortality, improving maternal health, and combating
disease. To help Africa to fulfill its potential we must address the problem of
This paper describes two key challenges in reducing hunger in Africa. The
first is to improve the immediate response to food crises. The second is to
tackle the root causes of acute and recurring hunger. The paper is not a
complete explanation of causes and solutions. Rather, it hopes to offer some
insights based on Oxfams programme experience and research with
pastoralists, farmers, and others across Africa.
Better emergency response
First, the emergency, or humanitarian, system must be overhauled, so that
it is truly able to deliver prompt, effective assistance on the basis of need. It
must support peoples livelihoods as well as meeting the immediate needs of
the hungry. The stop-start approach must give way to longer-term support,
wherever possible delivered through governments as part of their wider
social protection programmes, backed by reliable funding.
In recent years, international emergency assistance to sub-Saharan Africa
has increased and it has helped save many lives. However, it is often still
too little too late, and there remain gross inequalities in its distribution. The
timing and scale of a response are often driven more by political interests
and media exposure than by objectively assessed humanitarian need.
Moreover, the type of aid is still often inappropriate. It is not right that 70 per
cent of food aid distributed by the UN is still the produce of the developed
world: food aid should not be a means of supporting farmers in these
countries. When hunger is caused by lack of access to food as a result of

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poverty, rather than food shortages, providing cash can be a more
appropriate, faster, and less expensive response. This must be backed by
efforts to restore affected peoples livelihoods.
Tackling poverty, developing agriculture
Second, and more fundamentally, if food crises are to be averted, much
more must be done to tackle the root causes of hunger. That means tackling
poverty and the power imbalances that underpin it. The number of people in
sub-Saharan Africa who subsist on less than a dollar a day has almost
doubled since 1981, to 313 million people in 2001, representing 46 per cent
of the population. Most of Africas poor and undernourished people live in
rural areas. Smallholders, nomadic pastoralists, and women are particularly
vulnerable to hunger due to marginalisation and neglect. The joint effort
promised by African governments and donor governments to eradicate
poverty must therefore deliver rural policies that involve and prioritise these
vulnerable groups. Even small improvements in what they produce and earn
will have a major impact in reducing hunger, as well as driving equitable
There are no blueprints for effective agricultural policy. This should be
determined country-by-country, through consultation between governments,
civil society and donors, and agricultural producers themselves. However, a
key ingredient must be proper investment in long-term rural development
programmes and infrastructure, including support for organisations that
represent the voices of marginalised groups. African governments have
committed themselves to increase their spending on the rural sector to 10
per cent of their budgets. This should be backed by greater external
assistance financed from the recent G8 commitments to increase
development aid and debt relief.
An important lesson from the flawed market reforms introduced from the
1980s by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, backed by the
major donors, is that rural markets on their own cannot deliver food security.
State action is also needed. There is growing evidence, for example, that
government policies to stabilise prices, to provide cash transfers or targeted
agricultural inputs, can be a more timely and cost-effective way (than
emergency food aid) of ensuring food security.
However, major efforts are needed to improve the quality of government
intervention, which too often has been dogged by corruption and weak
capacity. Moreover, donor institutions such as the World Bank are rightly
accused of having fallen short of their own declared standards, in failing to
enforce conditions that would ensure proper use and full accountability of
loans and aid. Governments and donors must ensure that resources are
translated into concrete benefits for Africas poor and hungry. This will
require a major role for local civil society organisations in monitoring aid
flows and speaking out when things go wrong. Not to do so is to betray the
hungry of Africa.
Industrialised countries must also do much more to ensure that unjust
international trade rules do not destroy rural livelihoods. They must act to
stabilise the volatile commodity prices which create such hardship for
African producers. The rich-country trading blocs must stop forcing open

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African markets for their own benefit, and end the dumping of their
subsidised farm produce.

Conflict, HIV/AIDS, and climate change

The fact that more than 50 per cent of Africas current food crises can be
explained by armed conflict and the consequent displacement of millions of
people underlines the need for urgent action to bring peace. National
governments should play the central role, but the Africa Union has a vital
task in pressing for peaceful solutions and in providing security for citizens
when governments are unable or unwilling to do so, as in Darfur. It is also
the responsibility of the wider international community to give diplomatic,
economic and, where necessary, military support to peace processes and
peace-keeping, under UN auspices. International action to control the arms
trade is an essential complementary step.
Over the last decade, the international and national response to HIV/AIDS in
Africa has slowly been improving, and health spending has risen. Yet by
2005, nine out of ten Africans in need of AIDS medicines were still not
receiving them. Donor governments need to significantly increase their
assistance to health services to stem HIV/AIDS and other diseases that
cripple so many of Africas communities.
Since climate change is set to drastically increase poverty and hunger in
Africa, Northern governments need to intensify their efforts to reduce
emissions of green-house gases, as well as fund climate adaptation plans in
Africa. African governments must also step up action to halt the land
degradation which contributes to climate change.
The Way Forward
The story of nearly half-a-century of attempts at sophisticated and
sustainable solutions to hunger in Africa is not a happy one. But there is
hope. Too often we are told that food crises are now the norm in parts of
Africa, that corruption is ineradicable, that the era of post-colonial conflicts
will never end, that natural disasters and resulting food shortages can only
increase. This is untrue: there is good news from Africa and, as detailed in
some of the following pages, ideas abound for ways to address all these
pressing challenges.
Though the scale of the challenges seems daunting, in the last year there
have been unprecedented promises by African governments and the
international community to tackle poverty and food insecurity. A major
investment in tackling the root causes could work and it will cost the world
far less in money and human life than continuing the cycle of too little,
too late that has been the reality of famine relief in Africa for nearly half a

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1 Introduction
After the crisis we had nothing left to share with the other households. The
traditional system of solidarity and sharing couldn't work as everyone was
too poor.
Boubacar Amadou, Adebeji Village, Maradi, Niger, August 2005

In 2005, sub-Saharan Africa experienced a new wave of food

emergencies. 9 The crisis that had been quietly and mercilessly
unfolding in the Sahel became television news towards the middle of
the year. Later in the year hunger began to threaten Southern Africa.
In early 2006 a food crisis emerged in the Horn of Africa, affecting 11
million people. 10 Three and a half million people were in need of
emergency assistance in Kenya. 11 Many more people are suffering
from hunger in Africas less publicised crises, such as in the
Democratic Republic of Congo, where 71 per cent of the population
are undernourished, and in northern Uganda, where 48 per cent of
children are stunted due to chronic food insecurity. 12 A recent
UNICEF report stated that in sub-Saharan Africas silent emergency
of malnutrition, 28 per cent of all children are underweight. 13
National governments have the primary responsibility for ensuring
that people have access to food. But when governments fail whether
as result of poverty or lack of political will other countries have a
responsibility to act. This paper looks first at how the emergency
response should be improved, including the provision of more
predictable long-term funding, and second at what needs to be done
to tackle some of the root causes of the chronic food insecurity that
leads to recurring food crises. Inevitably, a paper of this length
cannot do justice to the varied situations in Africa and the complexity
or historical roots of the issues. Readers can refer to Oxfams policy
papers on the specific issues for more detailed analysis and

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2 Improving the emergency response
Livestock are just bones, no meat. The bones are just becoming toys for
John Egialan, Assistance Chief, Naadunga, Turkana, Kenya, speaking
in March 2006
In Oxfams experience, when acute food crises strike, most people are
extraordinarily resourceful and draw on a wide range of strategies to
survive. But when these survival strategies are exhausted, and when
national governments fail to help, international humanitarian
assistance is vital to help save lives and prevent acute malnutrition. 14
Adequate and timely assistance can help stop external shocks, such as
drought or locusts, from creating full-blown crises, thereby reducing
the need for subsequent costly interventions. Due to public
generosity and the commitment of some donor governments,
humanitarian assistance to Africa has grown from $946 million in
1997 to just over $3 billion in 2003. 15 But the lack of a reliable system
to address impending food crises condemns many to unnecessary
suffering and death.

Late, inadequate, and uneven aid

Emergency aid is often too little or arrives too late. This was the case
in Niger in 2005. Although the earliest warnings came in late 2004, it
was only when pictures of suffering children were shown on
television in June 2005 that the international community was
were suffering from hunger. Many had sold livestock, land, seeds, or
tools, or had gone into debt to buy food, eroding their assets and
rendering themselves even more vulnerable to future crises.
Late aid is a common problem. Most UN emergency appeals receive
only 30 per cent of the requested funds in their first month. 16 By
April 2006, for example, donors had only pledged or committed $79
million to the UNs Kenya appeal, launched in February 2006; $225
million had been requested.
Another problem is that the allocation of aid by many donor
countries is marked by stark inequalities. Distribution is determined
more by the media or political profile of the crises than by need.
Massive media coverage helped to ensure that the 2005 tsunami
appeal, covering the needs of at most two million affected people,
received $3.8 billion in pledges. This was equal to roughly half of the
funds for all emergencies worldwide in 2003. In contrast, the UN

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estimates that 16 million people are at immediate risk in ten
neglected and under-funded emergencies in Africa, which include
the prolonged tragedies of northern Uganda and the Democratic
Republic of Congo. In 2004 the UNs global Consolidated Appeals
received only $1.36 billion out of the $3.4 billion requested. 17
Although UN appeals are not a perfect measure of humanitarian
need or response, and do not take into account bilateral funding by
donor countries, they do highlight systematic and extensive
One reason cited by some donor governments for inadequate or late
funding of UN appeals is lack of confidence in UN agencies ability to
deliver the international aid effort effectively. The 2005 Humanitarian
Response Review, commissioned by the UN Emergency Relief Co-
ordinator, has proposed various measures to improve UN
performance, co-ordination and accountability. 18 These measures
deserve support. The reforms should also include a key role for an
enhanced FAO in promoting food security: currently, the World
Food Programme plays a lead role in emergencies but tends to focus
its efforts on delivering food aid. But donors also need to engage
positively with the UN and governments to help improve their
performance, rather than merely complaining or bypassing them.
Full funding of the recently re-launched UN Central Emergency
Response Fund (CERF) would also help to ensure timely and
equitable assistance. The UN has asked member states to contribute
$500 million to establish the new CERF this in addition to their
existing humanitarian aid commitments but Oxfam believes that at
least $1 billion is needed. Donor governments are unlikely, however,
to commit to the CERF, unless it is well governed, transparent and
accountable, and can disburse funds swiftly to the NGOs that deliver
much of the assistance on the ground.
Donors and UN agencies are not the only cause of inadequate or late
aid. Aid may arrive late because of inadequate Early Warning
Systems (EWS). 19 The EWS for Sahelian countries in 2005, for
example, was excessively focused on food production, failing to take
into account issues of access to food, such as rising prices and the
growing vulnerability of nomadic pastoralists. While the EWS in
West Africa are still not perfect they have improved since 2005.
While NGOs and community-based organisations often have reliable
early warning information, their evidence may be ignored because it
lacks the authority of official assessments. 20
Another problem can be the failure of governments to respond
quickly and effectively to early warnings. The Niger government
initially understated the seriousness of the 2005 crisis and was slow

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to call for international assistance. In Kenya, where there is a fairly
predictable cycle of droughts, there is a sophisticated and effective
EWS, but the government has not put in place the necessary
institutional structures or resources to respond quickly. 21
The Vulnerability Assessment Committees (VACs) in Southern Africa
are a useful way forward. They are government-led, so governments
have to take responsibility for the assessment results. In addition, the
UN and NGOs participate in the process, bringing additional
perspectives. The assessment from the Malawi VAC for the 2005
food crisis resulted in timely donor and government intervention.
Internationally agreed criteria to monitor and compare food
insecurity indicators, both during and between crises, would do
much to improve EWS, and help to ensure more timely and equitable
aid. For example, monitoring the increased sales of household assets
in a vulnerable area could provide an early indication of the need to
intervene, rather than waiting for acute malnutrition rates to soar, by
which time it is too late. 22

Inappropriate aid
Emergency food aid 23 is still the dominant response to food crises,
regularly constituting over half of all UN consolidated emergency
appeals. 24 Only 17 per cent of the non-food needs identified in the
recent UN appeal for Kenya, for example, were funded, compared to
46 per cent of food needs. 25 However, while food aid can play a
crucial role in saving lives and reducing hunger, it is at best an
incomplete response, and at worst can exacerbate food insecurity if it
harms farmers livelihoods. 26 Since much in-kind food aid is
imported, it can take up to four or five months to arrive. It may cost
as much as 50 per cent more than food purchased locally, and may be
nutritionally limited and culturally inappropriate. 27 For example, in
2004, Canada spent up to 40 per cent of its food aid budget on
transportation, before changing its policy to allow increased local
sourcing. 28
The disproportionate emphasis on in-kind food-aid donations is
partly due to vested interests. For some donor countries it has been a
useful way of offloading their own agricultural surpluses and
providing commercial benefits to their own agricultural and shipping
companies: 79 per cent of total food aid is sourced in donor countries.
actively harm farmers in the developing world. The US, which is the
biggest donor, provides most of its food aid in kind, but sources 99

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per cent of it domestically. 29 Denmark, France, and Italy also still
largely source their food aid domestically. 30
The World Food Programme, the main UN agency responsible for
delivering food aid, receives 48 per cent of its food from the USA, 31
and is only able to buy up to about 30 per cent of its food aid locally,
because it still receives the majority of its contributions from
governmental donors in kind, rather than in cash. 32 Some US NGOs
also have a conflict of interests regarding commodity food aid, since
they rely on sales of food aid to finance development programmes.
The emphasis on food aid is also sometimes due to a faulty diagnosis
that attributes hunger primarily to food shortages. Lack of food
availability is a significant problem in sub-Saharan Africa:
agricultural production has barely kept pace with population growth
in some countries, and drought and locusts can result in local
shortages. Moreover, conflict and poorly functioning markets in
many countries can cut off food supply. But in many other cases food
crises occur even when food is available on local markets. This is
primarily due to poverty, which limits peoples ability to produce or
buy enough food. 33 As many families farms and livestock cover only
part of their food needs, even small reductions in purchasing power
can tip them into crisis.
The role of poverty can be seen in the recent food crises. The
emergency now facing pastoralist communities in the arid north-east
of Kenya has emerged despite a national harvest which is 15 per cent
above average, and GDP growth of some five per cent for 2005. 34 In
Niger, although the 2004 harvest was lower than in previous years, it
was only 11 per cent below the 5-year average, and food was
available in many markets throughout the crisis. The underlying
problem was that the percentage of people living on less than a dollar
a day had increased from 40 per cent in 1990 to 66 per cent in 2004. 35
A sharp rise in prices pushed food out of the reach of many people.
Pastoralists were particularly hard hit by a combination of rising food
prices and falling livestock prices that drastically reduced their
purchasing power.

Getting it right
The challenge for governments, UN agencies, donor governments,
and NGOs is to ensure a response to food crises that is tailored to
each particular situation, and used to support livelihoods as well as
meeting immediate needs. The record is not good. A recent report for
USAID on Ethiopia said that international donor and government
non-food aid responses to the 2003 crisis were critically insufficient,
and that the USA (until recently) and the EU had prioritised

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emergency food-aid responses to the near exclusion of non-food
responses. 36
When there is a general lack of food availability, food aid is vital. In
these cases food should be purchased locally or regionally wherever
possible. Where lack of access to food is the main cause of hunger,
cash transfers to beneficiaries such as cash grants, vouchers, or
cash-for-work may be a better response, provided supply can react
to the increased demand. Otherwise prices may rise and harm people
not benefiting from the scheme. 37
Evaluations of Oxfams cash-transfer schemes show that people
prefer them to food aid. Such schemes respect their dignity: people
are more than passive beneficiaries and can choose how they spend.
They can also use the cash for items that will improve their farming.
And the money they spend may also boost the local economy. 38

Cash-for-work in Kenya
So far Ive received 5,000 shillings of the 10,000 well get from cash-for-
work. Im paying for my brother to attend school. He is at secondary
school so we have to pay for that. Ive spent 3,000 on school fees, another
1,000 Ive spent on medication for one of my sons. With the remaining
1,000 I managed to buy two kids (goats). One I call Oxfam!
Pamela Ataa in Turkana, northern Kenya
Providing cash to households through a cash-for-work programme gives
people the dignity to make choices and buy what they need to support their
families. 22,000 people are benefiting from Oxfam's cash-for-work
programme in Turkana, northern Kenya, for households that have limited
livelihoods options and are not able to provide fully for their families. They
work on a range of projects benefiting individual households or the whole
community, such as improving water sources and planting trees. For
example, Pamela helped to protect a hand pump and redirect a local river
so that it filled the hand-dug wells. Oxfams experience has shown that
households spend the money on food and other basic necessities, and
invest in the future by buying tools, for example. It means that people do
not have to resort to detrimental strategies to survive, such as selling off
livestock. The provision of cash also helps to revitalise the local economy.
Source: Oxfam

The encouraging news is that some donors and humanitarian

agencies increasingly consider cash transfers and local purchasing as
an appropriate response to food crises. Three of the four major
donors the EU, Canada, and Australia have increased their
flexibility to buy their food aid from developing countries. 39 But there
is still some way to go. 40 Getting the response to food crises right also
requires a sound assessment of needs, including consultation with
the people affected. 41

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Greater efforts are also needed to provide vulnerable people with
complementary livelihood support, backed by long-term
development programmes. Early intervention to help communities
build food, seed, or fodder banks can, for example, help mitigate the
impact of future droughts. They may prevent people trying to cope in
ways which may damage their future prospects, such as selling their
tools or land. Organised de-stocking and restocking programmes for
animals can also do much to reduce the kind of catastrophic damage
to pastoral livelihoods seen in the Niger crisis. Oxfam and others are
increasingly using farmers and livestock fairs to ensure access to
appropriate seeds and animal breeds after crises hit.

Livelihood support seed fairs using cash vouchers in Zimbabwe

Through the seed fair I was able to purchase groundnuts and bambara
nuts, which over the past four cropping seasons I have been looking for
with no success. I am going to cultivate them to alleviate hunger and
ensure some seeds are bulked for next season.
An elderly woman in Gutu district, Zimbabwe
Giving farmers vouchers to buy seeds at fairs offers them more choice than
distribution of seeds by aid agencies. Oxfam held 37 seed fairs in
partnership with local organisations in Masvingo and Midlands provinces,
Zimbabwe, bringing together producers, seed merchants, extension
agents, and local people who were given vouchers to pay for their own
choice of seed. Hundreds of local farmers crowded in to see what was on
offer. The rich diversity of 21 crops and 51 varieties included groundnuts,
sorghum, cowpeas, maize, soybeans, sesame, rice, sunflower, and pearl
millet, as well as a range of vegetable seeds, some of which were
previously threatened with extinction. Many of these traditional crops are
cheaper and more tolerant of marginal conditions than high-yielding
varieties. 23,000 households benefited directly through buying seeds.
Source: Oxfam

Another key challenge is to ensure that emergency aid is not diverted

by corrupt elites, or used by governments or other groups for their
own ends. This is a particular risk in conflict situations (as discussed
later in this paper). However, aid programmes can be designed to
reduce these risks. Oxfams experience shows that the involvement of
communities in targeting and monitoring aid distribution is an
important way of ensuring transparency and accountability of
delivery, and of reducing aid diversion or theft. There are also a
range of other well tried and tested methods. 42 Where there are
concerns that community consultation will result in aid not reaching
those that need it, donors can channel resources through external
agencies, although this may have the disadvantage of not building
local know-how and technical capacity.

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Towards predictable financing
The persistence of chronic hunger has led some donors and
governments to conclude that an increasing proportion of
humanitarian assistance should be channelled through long-term
government safety nets, or social-protection programmes, rather than
the unpredictable stop-start cycle of emergency aid. 43 These schemes
seek to provide people who suffer from chronic food insecurity with
resources cash, food, or inputs that can be scaled up or down
according to need over longer time periods.
One recent example is the Ethiopian governments donor-backed
Productive Safety Net Programme, which provides cash-for-work
and food aid for eight million people. In another pilot scheme in
Zambia, the poorest 10 per cent of communities in one district of
Southern Province receive cash transfers of $6 per person per month.
Government run social-protection programmes are not without their
problems, but Oxfam believes that they can offer a positive way
forward. The longer timescales and greater predictability of resource
transfers help to reduce risks to beneficiaries, and encourage them to
invest. The schemes can also be considerably cheaper than emergency
food aid. Scaling up the pilot cash-transfer programme in Zambia to
national level, for example, could be four times cheaper than a food
programme providing equivalent benefits. 44 Such programmes can
also help to improve government accountability to their populations.
If they are to work effectively, social-protection programmes require
leadership at the highest level of government, and sustained funding
from governments and donors. 45 The appropriate mix of
interventions must be tailored to local needs, and the programmes
carefully designed to avoid the risk of corruption or political abuse.
Where weak states, conflict, or corruption preclude government
involvement, resources will have to be channelled through local
authorities, communities, or NGOs.

3 Tackling root causes

Emergency aid has undoubtedly helped save many lives and reduced
hunger. But it cannot be a substitute for the long-term development
programmes and structural reforms needed to tackle the root causes
of food crises. The situation varies enormously between countries,
but some of the main causes are an increase in poverty, agricultural
mismanagement and neglect, unfair international trade rules, conflict,
and the unprecedented threats of HIV/AIDS and climate change.

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When I saw this on the road I thought, God has fed me, he just gave me
food. Id gone to beg for something for my children. Then I came here, I dont
know why, perhaps God guided me here and I found this food. I dont know
whether to continue to collect this food or go home to feed my children who
are waiting and hungry. They havent eaten since yesterday.
Naramat Kuyato, a displaced Maasai woman encountered beside the
road in Ngorongoro District, northern Tanzania (she was picking up
grains of maize that had fallen from a passing vehicle), April 2006
Poverty, compounded by ill health and lack of education, is a major
underlying cause of hunger. 46 Hunger, in turn, perpetuates poverty
by impairing peoples learning and earning capacity. Some African
countries have succeeded in reducing endemic poverty but, overall,
the number of people in sub-Saharan Africa who subsist on less than
a dollar a day has almost doubled since 1981, to 313 million people in
2001, representing 46 per cent of the population. 47
Much of the current policy debate blames poor governance,
corruption, and clientilism (exchanging votes for favours) for
Africas poverty. 48 Recent FAO analysis shows that countries where
food security has deteriorated had the least stable governments,
weakest rule of law, and most rampant corruption. 49 In Oxfams
experience power imbalances and a lack of political will to address
poverty, inequality, and hunger are often an important underlying
problem. Government neglect or hostility towards particular social
groups, such as pastoralists, women, or ethnic minority groups, can
greatly exacerbate food insecurity. In the Horn of Africa, for example,
40 per cent of the people who are chronically poor and food insecure
are pastoralists. In Zimbabwe a significant factor aggravating food
insecurity was Operation Clean Up, a 2005 government-sponsored
crackdown on informal traders which affected 700,000 people and
caused many to lose their homes and livelihoods.

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This is not just about pastoralism and water but about marginalisation;
about failed pastoralist policies that are keeping us in the margins.'
Edaan Johnmark, Oxfam Partner, Riam Riam, Turkana, northern Kenya
Pastoralists have been some of the worst hit by recent food crises in Niger
and Kenya. Their vulnerability is linked to a long history of government
misunderstanding, mistrust, and neglect. In most African countries,
pastoralists are a minority, whose lifestyle is seen as primitive and outdated
by government officials, who assume that pastoralists must adapt to
mainstream systems of development and service delivery. As a result,
pastoralists often lack access to land, water, health, and education. They
are also badly affected by increased pressures on land, and climate
change. Pastoralist women are doubly disadvantaged, given the limitations
that they face within their own societies, for example in owning property or
taking on public roles. Despite these problems pastoralism is the livelihood
strategy best adapted to the vast grass plains of the Sahel, and with the
right policy environment, can be highly productive.

The main pressure for pro-poor and inclusive governance will have
to come internally from progressive leaders, civil society, and the
media. However, rich-country policies have also exerted a powerful
constraining influence on development throughout Africas history.
Since the 1980s, inadequate debt cancellation, declining and poor-
quality development aid, flawed advice from donors, conditions
attached to aid that forced countries to adopt damaging agricultural
policies, and unfair trade rules have all contributed to low growth in
sub-Saharan Africa, exacerbating problems caused by poor
governance. 50 There is also evidence that international donors have
not always properly enforced conditions attached to loans and aid
designed to promote good governance, and thus contributed to
cultures of clientilism and corruption. 51
Although far short of what is needed, the G8 commitments in 2005 to
increase development aid and cancel debts to reduce poverty must be
translated into action. Donor countries should also ensure that their
wider international policies whether trade, energy, or security are
consistent with their commitments to reduce poverty.
Fears that aid will be siphoned off by corrupt elites or used for
political purposes should not be an excuse for inaction: the evidence
shows that development aid has provided vital resources for human
development in Africa, and most studies show that it has contributed
to growth. 52 Moreover, the policy environment for aid is improving.
Many sub-Saharan African governments are developing national
poverty-reduction strategies. There has been movement among
donors to ensure that aid is used for poverty reduction rather than for

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their own commercial or political benefit. 53 However, more can be
done. Governments can accelerate their efforts to reduce poverty,
and work with governments and civil-society groups to ensure that
programmes are designed to reduce corruption. Donors can provide
financial support for civil society to track and monitor aid flows, and
help reduce incentives for corruption by ensuring that governments
have the resources to attract skilled staff and pay adequate salaries. 54

In the immediate future, efforts to tackle the root causes of hunger in
most sub-Saharan African countries should focus mainly on the rural
sector, which accounts for 70 per cent of the population and two-
thirds of livelihoods. 55 Although food insecurity is growing in urban
and peri-urban areas, particularly where HIV/AIDS is prevalent,
most of Africas poor and undernourished groups still live in rural
areas. 56 Despite this, an important underlying cause of food crises
has been government neglect or mismanagement of agriculture,
along with flawed donor advice and conditionality.
It is crucial that the promised joint effort of African governments and
donors to eradicate poverty, through the New Partnership for African
Development (NEPAD) and the Africa Commission, delivers
effective agricultural policies that involve and prioritise smallholders,
pastoralists, and women. 57 Even modest gains in output and income
among these groups would do much to reduce hunger and poverty. 58
Evidence indicates that countries that have improved food security
have had an overriding government commitment to the smallholder
agricultural sector. 59 It also shows that rural growth can drive
growth in the rest of the economy. 60

Investing in the rural poor

Pro-poor agricultural policies will require a significant increase in
investment in rural areas. NEPAD has estimated that nearly $18
billion per year will be needed in order to achieve the World Food
Summit goal of halving hunger in Africa. 61 It also proposes that
Africa should increase its domestic contribution to agricultural
investment from the current base of around 35 per cent to some 55
per cent by 2015. 62
At the AU summit in July 2003, leaders endorsed the Maputo
Declaration on Agriculture and Food Security in Africa, which
committed them to increase agriculture spending to at least 10 per
cent of annual budgets. 63 This is a welcome step, but one estimate
suggests that governments are still spending an average of only five

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per cent of their budgets on agriculture, even though so many people
depend on agriculture as their main source of income. 64
Even the limited budgetary funding that is allocated to agriculture in
Africa may neglect smallholders and pastoralists. For example, the
Ministry of Economic Planning and Development in Malawi recently
drafted a growth strategy which involves a reallocation of resources
away from pro-poor expenditure in order to bolster growth in the
estate sector. 65 In Kenya, the government has an Arid Lands
Development Plan to tackle the poverty and vulnerability of people
living in these regions, but it has not been implemented.
Moreover, external development aid to African agriculture has
declined sharply. Aid to agricultural production in Sub Saharan
Africa declined by 43 per cent between 1990-92 to 2000-02 - from an
average of $ 1.7 billion to an average of $ 974 million, although it has
recently shown a slight recovery. 66 Similarly, FAO and AU figures
indicate that after a peak of $4.8 billion in 1989, the rural sector in
Africa as a whole (including production, infrastructure and
marketing) fell to slightly above $2.5 billion after 1997, before
increasing again to $3.4 billion in 2002. 67 Between 1997 and 2001,
World Bank lending for agriculture also declined by 30 per cent. 68

Supporting rural livelihoods

When formulating policies it should be from the down up, only at the
moment it comes from the up down and that causes problems. If they are
taking decisions that affect me and we haven't formulated them together
then how can I agree? It is my basic human right to be involved in matters
that affect me.
Ephrem, Maasai pastoralist, Ngorongoro, Tanzania, April 2006

In Oxfams experience long-term investment in rural development

programmes with vulnerable groups can play a crucial role in
reducing food insecurity. Increased resources should be channelled to
help improve peoples access to essential agricultural inputs, such as
seeds, tools, fertilizers, and credit; to improve access to markets; and
to help develop non-farm income- generating activities. Investment in
water conservation and small-scale irrigation is also vital, because so
much of African agriculture is still rain-fed and subject to the
vagaries of the weather. 69 In all these areas advanced technologies
can help improve productivity and incomes. However, in many cases
simple technologies such as water conservation techniques, small
tractors, hand carts, and dryers can do a lot. Finally, improved health
and education services are vital if people are to work themselves out
of poverty.

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Livelihood support linking relief and development
'The programme has given stability to the households because the men
didn't need to leave the villages and we didn't need to take debts for food
items. In addition, we can store our new harvest because we still have
some foods from the programme.'
A woman in Dakoro, Niger
At the peak of the emergency in the Sahel, Oxfam was able to help people
to avoid falling deeper into debt by paying a normal price for weak animals,
which were then slaughtered and used to feed the most vulnerable
members of society. This was accompanied by a voucher/cash for work
programme in which people in northern Mali and southern Niger were paid
for working on community projects. Over 8,000 weak animals were bought
and slaughtered, 960 hectares of pasture were replanted, and 30
traditional dams were rehabilitated. Once the peak of the crisis had
passed, Oxfam continued to support the same communities through animal
and seed fairs, providing hundreds of farmers and herders with options for
rebuilding their livelihoods. This level of continued and adapted support is
key if communities are to avoid slipping further into debt each time there is
an external 'shock'.
Source: Oxfam

However, poverty and food insecurity are also caused by power

imbalances, which are both a cause and an effect of the lack of access
to resources. Oxfams experience suggests that the most effective
development programmes empower local communities to articulate
their needs, claim their rights, and to influence those in power to
become responsive to their concerns. In Wajir in northern Kenya,
pastoralists have established 32 pastoral associations, which manage
local development programmes, seek improved service delivery to
pastoralists, and represent pastoralists at district and national levels
of government.
It is also crucial that women are involved in and benefit from
development programmes. Women are responsible for 70 per cent of
food production in Africa, most of the selling of family produce and
half of the animal husbandry, in addition to food preparation,
gathering firewood, fetching water, childcare, and the care of the sick
and elderly. 70 Improvements in womens education and income have
a major positive impact in reducing child malnutrition. 71

Improving access to land

Although land availability has been a less pressing problem in sub-
Saharan Africa than in Asia and Latin America, landlessness, skewed
patterns of ownership, and insecure tenure can be major causes of
food insecurity and poverty.

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In parts of Southern Africa, for example, the agriculture sector is still
characterised by an agricultural structure inherited from colonialism,
consisting of large estates that occupy the most fertile arable land,
and tiny farms on less fertile soils reliant on rain-fed agriculture,
which is where the majority of the poor farmers live.
Increasing the rights of poor and marginalised groups to land,
including redistributive land reform, involves difficult decisions
around compensation, as well as the need for complementary
measures to provide technical support and agricultural inputs. But it
can be a vital way of improving food security.
Efforts to improve womens rights to land, including inheritance
rights, are particularly important. Women often lack rights to land
even when they head households or are responsible for food
production. This prevents them from using land as collateral for
credit, and acts as a disincentive to investments that would help to
reduce vulnerability. In many African countries, women lose all
rights to cultivate their husbands land when he dies. 72
In the Sahel and East Africa, pastoralists have suffered acutely from
the privatisation and fencing of common land, and the alienation of
pastures for non-pastoral uses. 73

Rethinking the role of the state

A significant lesson learned from the flawed market reforms
introduced from the 1980s by the International Monetary Fund and
World Bank, backed by major donors, is that state action is needed to
deliver food security. This is particularly so in rural areas of Africa,
where markets are often very weak, risky, and inequitable, 74 and
where price instability is a particular problem.
Free-market policies were supposed to eradicate the urban bias,
inefficiency, and corruption associated with previous interventionist
state policies. However, it is increasingly accepted that such policies
have failed to deliver the substantial agricultural growth needed to
drive rural poverty reduction and increase food security. 75 After a
pronounced decline in the 1970s and early 1980s, per capita food
production has stagnated. 76
A major problem was the reduction of the states capacity to
intervene in food markets, without first assuring the emergence of a
strong private sector to fill the gap. 77 Where private traders have
moved in to replace the state they have sometimes done so on highly
unfavourable terms for poor farmers. In many instances, this left
farmers more food insecure, and governments more reliant on
unpredictable international aid flows. 78

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While few would recommend a complete return to the interventionist
policies of the past, many acknowledge the important role of the state
in providing infrastructure and public goods to facilitate markets.
The state also needs to set a legislative framework for land reform,
and to provide technical assistance. There is now also growing
recognition that direct state intervention grain reserves to stabilise
prices, cash transfers, or subsidised or free agricultural inputs can
provide a cheaper and more effective way of ensuring food security.
The World Bank, for example, has recently acknowledged this in
relation to government input schemes. 79
The appropriate mix of interventions should be determined case by
case in a consultative process between governments, civil society, and
donors. Where markets are functioning, governments can provide
cash transfers to help people buy agricultural inputs, as well as meet
their immediate consumption needs. Another much-studied
approach is the Malawian governments targeted-inputs programme
which consisted of a small pack of free inputs, including enough
fertilizer for around 0.1 hectares, which was distributed widely to
smallholders. There is evidence that this programme increased
productivity and output of maize, and hence income. 80 However,
this approach may not offer as much choice for farmers over inputs as
cash transfers. Another approach is targeted subsidies, though care
must be taken to ensure that they are not captured by wealthier
groups. Subsidising producers organisations or co-operatives is
another way of ensuring inputs and services to farmers and
pastoralists, particularly if corruption precludes government
However, major efforts are needed to improve the quality of
government intervention, and reduce the risks of political abuse and
corruption. Also, both governments and donors need to move away
from short-term politicised interventions and towards long-term,
predictable strategies to support smallholders. According to a recent
report on Malawi, donors approaches in the agricultural sector have
been characterised by short-term thinking, competitiveness, and
personality politics, criticisms often made by donors about African
governments. Because of donors strong influence on government
policy, this has contributed to inconsistent and contradictory
agricultural policies that have seriously harmed the poor, and
increased food insecurity. 81

Unfair international trade rules

International trade in agricultural products can both enhance and
harm food security in Africa. On the positive side, imports allow

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food-deficit countries to meet the needs of their population, while
exports such as cotton and coffee can give farmers valuable cash
income to supplement their food production. Although the limited
prospects for some exports suggest that African farmers may need to
focus on supplying food staples to their domestic and regional
markets, 82 the unfair policies pursued by industrialised countries
make agricultural trade far less beneficial that it should be, and are
often a negative influence.
Rural poverty in sub-Saharan Africa is exacerbated by dependence on
the export of a small number of agricultural commodities, many of
which face volatile and falling world prices. In 20022003, for
example, a collapse in coffee prices contributed to the Ethiopian food
crisis that same year. 83 Part of the problem is that the IMF and World
Bank have actively promoted export-led growth throughout the
developing world, not least to pay debt obligations, which has led to
increased supply and global price falls in crops like cocoa, sugar and
coffee. Countries also find it hard to move into the manufacture and
sale of processed products, which would have more stable prices, due
to rich-country trade barriers. It is no accident that Germany is a
major exporter of processed coffee.
Although there has been welcome progress from the EU and Canada
in providing improved market access for exports from the least-
developed countries, many of which are in sub-Saharan Africa, the
industrialised world still maintains significant tariff and non-tariff
barriers, such as excessively high food-safety standards. According to
a World Bank study, nine African countries could lose $670 million in
exports of dried fruit and nuts, due to an EU standard that, in reality,
provides no significant health benefits to consumers. 84
At the same time, IMF loan conditionality during the 1980s and 1990s
obliged many African countries to cut duties and quotas on imported
agricultural products, thus increasing imports and reducing prices on
the domestic market. While this may have some benefit for urban
low-income families if price reductions are passed on to consumers, it
can undermine domestic production of staple crops and aggravate
rural poverty.
The EU and USA are also guilty of damaging rural livelihoods in
Africa by supporting their own farmers with over $300 billion a year
in subsidies, and then dumping the output on world markets, which
depresses prices. US exports of subsidised cotton cost West Africa as
much as $200 million a year in lost earnings, much of which would
have gone to smallholder farmers in the very poorest countries. 85
Rich countries and international agribusinesses largely reject
measures to stabilise the volatile commodity prices that create such

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hardship for African producers. At the same time, in a remarkable
display of double standards, in trade negotiations at the WTO, the
industrialised countries, notably the EU and USA, have so far failed
to offer sufficient cuts in their farm subsidies, have maintained
excessively high levels of protection, and have refused to grant poor
countries the flexibility to defend low-income farmers from cheap
imports. This behaviour stands in stark contrast to their oft-stated
commitments to reduce poverty and hunger in Africa.

The main driver for guns is not criminality, it's self-preservation. The need
to live another day. Neighbours are armed and we are faced with extinction.
There's the need to be responsible without aggression.
Edaan Johnmark, Oxfam partner, Riam Riam, Turkana, northern
Conflict, and the related displacement and exile of millions of people,
is responsible for more than half of the reported food emergencies in
Africa as of February 2005. 86 The high rate of chronic under-
nourishment in the Democratic Republic of Congo for example 71
per cent of the population in 2002 is in large part due to its
prolonged civil war. 87
Conflict disrupts economic activity, reduces investment, and diverts
resources to military purposes. Many people are displaced or take
refuge in urban centres, flee the country or are conscripted, wounded,
or killed, thus leaving farms unattended, with drastic consequences
for food production. Fear and insecurity often prevent people tending
farms or livestock. Rural infrastructure and markets can be
destroyed, and cultivable land can be made inaccessible by
landmines. Insecurity restricts mobility and grazing, and
impoverishment due to conflict prompts people to engage in risky
and illegal activities.
While these effects are sometimes the unintended result of conflict,
they can also form part of a war strategy. International humanitarian
law prevents warring parties from targeting civilian food stocks,
crops, or livestock, and coerced population displacement is expressly
prohibited. Governments are also required to protect civilians during
conflict and to provide humanitarian assistance or enable its
provision by impartial organisations. However, warring parties
sometimes actively deny access to food to communities or ethnic
groups perceived as supporting the opposition. This may involve
acts of commission such as deliberate bombing of farms, or looting of
livestock; or acts of omission such as the failure of authorities to

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declare an emergency; or the blocking, withholding, or selective
provision of aid. In Darfur, the governments failure to control the
violence directed against largely sedentary ethnic groups, by the
militias from opposing nomadic groups, has left 3.4 million people
dependent on food aid. Recent developments have included the
intentional destruction of large tracts of food crops, to prevent 1.8
million internally displaced persons (IDPs) who live in camps
returning to their farms.

Twenty years of war in northern Uganda

For 20 years, northern Uganda has been trapped in a deadly and horrific
conflict between the government and the Lords Resistance Army. The
conflict has displaced 1.8 million people. Seventy-eight per cent of these
households have no access to land, 84 per cent are dependent upon food
relief, with almost 900 excess deaths a week. This situation has caused
high levels of chronic malnutrition: for example, about 48 per cent of
children in Kitgum district are stunted. The economic cost of the war to the
region is around $864 million largely lost agricultural production and
labour productivity.
Source: Civil Society Organisation for Peace in northern Uganda
(CSOPNU), March 2006, Counting the Cost: Twenty Years of war in
northern Uganda

There cannot be a thorough solution to Africas food crisis without a

solution to its armed conflicts. This is primarily the responsibility of
African governments and other non-state combatants, but also of the
AU, which, with support from the international community, must
rise to this challenge. And it is the international communitys
responsibility too. As the 2005 UN World Summit agreed, national
governments have the prime responsibility to protect their
populations, but governments beyond Africa share that
Rich countries must engage more seriously in the pursuit of peace in
Africa. Among other measures, they should increase their support for
AU and UN peace-keeping missions in Africa, control the supply of
arms to the region, restrict imports of natural resources that are
exploited to sustain conflicts, and ensure that companies under their
jurisdictions are not furthering conflict through the illegal or
unethical exploitation of natural resources.
There needs to be a step change in the generosity and urgency in
providing peace-keepers in countries such as Sudan and the
Democratic Republic of the Congo. The AUs African Standby Force
must be built up sooner rather than later. Negotiations to conclude
an international Arms Trade Treaty may take years, but at the very
least, they must begin in 2006.

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Such activities must be accompanied by a major investment in
poverty reduction and support for accountable governance, which
would do most to help reduce conflict. Once a conflict is over, there
must be more generous and sustained aid to prevent countries like
Sierra Leone or Liberia returning to violence. That aid must be
conflict-sensitive; it must be used to reintegrate former fighters into
a stable society effectively, providing them with the peaceful
livelihoods that are the surest alternative to violence.

Sub-Saharan Africa is home to 26 million people living with HIV,
more than 60 per cent of all the people in the world with the virus.
This is in addition to other debilitating ailments, such as malaria, TB,
and diarrhoea. In 2005, HIV/AIDS killed about 2.4 million people in
Africa, mainly prime-age adults, crippling the workforce, ripping the
heart out of communities and families, and leaving around 12 million
orphans. Southern African countries are particularly badly affected. 88
HIV/AIDS constitutes a human tragedy and a threat to food security.
Sickness and ill health reduce peoples ability to cultivate their land
or to work off-farm. Death prevents parents passing on vital
agricultural or other skills to their children. The time spent caring for
others, a job that often falls to women, reduces the time available for
productive work. The need to pay for medicines means that families
sell farm tools or even the land they depend upon. Maize production
on communal farms in Zimbabwe fell by 54 per cent between 1992
and 1997, largely because of AIDS-related illness and death. 89 This
creates a vicious cycle, as under-nutrition exacerbates the onset of
opportunistic infections and AIDS, as well as reducing the
effectiveness of anti-retrovirals.
Gender inequality, and high levels of sexual abuse in some countries,
place women at greater risk of infection. As women are mainly
responsible for food production and caring for children, this can have
negative impacts on household nutrition. Moreover, the fact that
AIDS widows in some countries have difficulty obtaining credit, or
have lost their rights over land, increases the difficulties they face in
providing food for their families. 90
The hopeful news is that both government and international
responses to AIDS have improved over the past decade. There has
been an increase in health spending by African governments,
supported by aid and debt cancellation; 91 prevention programmes in
some countries are helping to reduce infection rates; and growing
sections of civil society across Africa, such as the Treatment Action

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Campaign and the Pan African Treatment Campaign, are pressing
governments to address the pandemic.
But the response is still nowhere near the scale needed. Only one in
every ten Africans needing AIDS medicines was receiving them in
2005. 92 It will cost at least $55 billion over the next three years to
provide prevention, treatment, and care to people living with
HIV/AIDS in developing countries. 93 Donors must dramatically
increase their financial assistance to health services to combat
HIV/AIDS and other diseases that cripple so many of Africas
Pharmaceutical companies should ensure that medicines are
affordable by offering preferential prices, allowing generic
manufacturers to supply low-cost versions of drugs on which they
hold patents, and supporting flexible patent rules in trade
AIDS considerations also need to be incorporated into the design of
food-security and development programmes. This can be done, for
example, by promoting the use of agricultural crops, technologies,
and livestock which use less labour, and provide nutritious food.
Goats, rabbits, and poultry are easier to look after than large animals,
and reproduce more rapidly; vegetable gardens or fruit trees can be
grown near the home, produce over the year, and need little care. 94

Climate change
This development, like cars, that is bringing stress to the land and plastics
are being burnt and are filling the air. We think there is a lot of connection
between that and what is happening now with the droughts. If you bring oil
and petrol and throw it onto the grass it doesnt grow, so what are all these
cars and new innovations doing to a bigger area? Every day diseases are
increasingones that we havent seen before.
Sesophio, Maasai tribesman displaced from the Serengeti by
drought, Tanzania, April 2006
Africa is the continent most vulnerable to climate change because of
its extreme poverty and dependence on rain-fed agriculture, which
means that even small changes in the weather can have big impacts.
Climate data for Africa for the last 3040 years show that the
continent has been warming, contributing to more erratic but intense
rains, in other words more droughts but also more floods. 95 It is
estimated that desertification is advancing at an annual rate of 3.5 per
cent in sub-Saharan Africa, with much higher rates in the arid and
semi-arid areas. If current trends continue, some climate models
predict that by 2050 Africa will be warmer by 0.52 degrees Celsius,

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with less rainfall and higher evaporation rates in northern and
Southern Africa. 96
This will exacerbate existing vulnerability and food insecurity for
smallholders and pastoralists, who are already facing great
difficulties coping with increasingly erratic rains and land
degradation. Africa is expected to experience marked reductions in
yields and decreases in production. 97
One credible prediction estimates that Africa will have between 55
and 65 million extra people at risk of hunger by the 2080s if global
temperatures increase by less than 2.5C. That figure will rise to 80
million if the increase is higher. 98 A study released by Christian Aid
in May 2006 states that disease attributable to climate change could
kill 185 million people in Africa this century. 99
Climate change, by making resources more scarce, may well
exacerbate conflict. Oxfam witnessed how increased pressure on
resources deepened tensions between nomads and agriculturalists in
Niger during the 2005 crisis, and it has been argued that increased
competition over land was one of the triggers of the conflict in
Darfur. 100 Any increase in inter-communal violence can be exploited
in much wider conflicts.
Northern societies are primarily responsible for the human
contribution to global warming. If Northern governments are serious
about tackling poverty and food insecurity in Africa, they will need
to intensify efforts to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases.
They should also provide financial assistance to help African
communities and governments to adapt to climate change. Large
emerging economies such as China, Brazil, and India will need to
take similar action.
However, drought and desertification are also caused by local factors.
In East Africa, deforestation and commercial exploitation of wetlands
have drastically reduced the environments natural moisture
protection and rainfall. 101 In West Africa, growing population
pressure on land, deforestation, overgrazing, and inadequate
agricultural practices and water management have all contributed to
drought and desertification. 102
African governments therefore need to intensify their efforts to
implement reforestation programmes, repair damage to forest and
wetland resources, regulate commercial activities, and develop
climate-adaptation plans. 103 The latter should include crop and
livelihood diversification, including non-farm activities, which are
less sensitive to climatic variability. Climate adaptation plans need to
be mainstreamed into economic and poverty reduction strategies.

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4 Recommendations to mitigate and
prevent food crises
Addressing the problems outlined in this paper seems daunting. But
the last year has seen unprecedented commitments by African
governments and the international community to tackle poverty and
hunger. The worlds governments have committed themselves to
halving hunger by 2015, as a key element of the Millennium
Development Goals. Many AU members have identified agriculture
and food security as important policy goals and some, like South
Africa, have enshrined the right to food in their constitutions. The
AU and NEPAD have developed a Comprehensive African
Agricultural Programme, 104 the Commission for Africa has called for
increased attention to agriculture, and the G8 and the 2005 UN
summit have called for increased help to reduce poverty and hunger
in Africa. The challenge now is to build the political will, both within
and beyond Africa, to translate these promises into sustained and
effective action that provides concrete benefits for poor people.
International action must be underpinned by pro-poor, accountable,
and inclusive governance within Africa.

Improving the humanitarian response

Improved Early Warning Systems are needed that include
indicators on access to food and markets, as well as food
Donor countries should help ensure quicker and more equitable
emergency assistance by committing $1 billion to the revamped
UN global emergency fund (CERF).
Governments should put in place the necessary personnel and
structures to enable them to respond effectively to food crises and
to integrate disaster prevention, preparedness, and mitigation
into poverty reduction strategies.
Governments, donors, and UN agencies should end the bias
towards food aid, and ensure a flexible, appropriate mix of
emergency assistance that supports livelihoods as well as meeting
immediate needs. This requires donors to untie food aid and
increase financing for local purchase of food and for cash
transfers. Emergency efforts must be backed by development

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Governments should establish long-term social protection
schemes for people affected by chronic and predictable food
insecurity, backed by long-term donor funding.
The UN should improve its co-ordination and performance in
emergency responses to food crises, including a key role for the
FAO in promoting food security.
International agreement is needed on criteria to measure and
compare humanitarian need and food insecurity, integrated into
Early Warning Systems and needs assessments.

Tackling root causes

The African Union should rise to the challenge of addressing
Africas major wars. Industrialised countries should increase their
support for AU and UN peace-keeping missions, control the
supply of arms, and police the marketing of natural resources, the
exploitation of which sustains conflict.
The international community should do far more to consolidate
fragile peace deals, by generous and sustained assistance that
provides peaceful livelihoods to former combatants and others.
Governments should adopt effective rural policies that prioritise
smallholders, pastoralists, and women producers. The
appropriate mix of policies should be based on a consultative
process and be complemented by investments in organisations
that can represent the voice of marginalised people.
Greater long-term investment in rural development is needed,
reaching at least the AU target of 10 per cent of government
spending, with greater external finance from the increased aid
and debt cancellation promised by the G8.
Donors should move decisively away from free-market
conditionality, support government intervention in markets
where appropriate, and work with governments and civil society
to build capacity and reduce the risks of corruption.
Industrialised countries should support measures to stabilise
commodity markets, end the dumping of subsidised exports,
allow poor countries to defend sensitive agricultural sectors from
low-priced imports, and further open their own markets to
African exports.
Large increases are needed in financing for HIV/AIDS
programmes, and broader health services; there should be flexible
patent rules to ensure affordable medicines; and HIV/AIDS

27 Causing Hunger an overview of the food crisis in Africa, Oxfam

Briefing Paper, July 2006
should be factored in to the design of food-security and
development programmes.
Industrialised and major emerging economies should increase
their efforts to reduce global warming and increase financial
assistance to help Africa to adapt to climate change. African
governments should accelerate efforts to reverse environmental
degradation, and integrate plans for climate change adaptation
into poverty-reduction strategies.

Causing Hunger an overview of the food crisis in Africa, Oxfam 28

Briefing Paper, July 2006

FAO (2004) State of Food Insecurity in the World.
FAO (2003) State of Food Insecurity in the World.
FAO (2005) State of Food Insecurity in the World, foreword: If each of
South America and the Caribbean will reach the Millennium Development
Goal (MDG) target of cutting the proportion of hungry people by half. None
will reach the more ambitious World Food Summit (WFS) goal of halving the
number of hungry people.
FAO (2003) op. cit.
Dr J. Lorimer, Oxford University Centre for the Environment, background
research paper on the predicted climate change impacts of greatest
relevance to Oxfam, quoting M. Parry et al. (1999) Climate change and
world food insecurity: a new assessment, Global Environmental Change 9,
supplement 1.
FAO (2005) op. cit.
See Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 25, and the
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, article 11.
GDP lost to malnutrition runs as high as 2 to 3 percent. World Bank (2006)
Repositioning Nutrition as Central to Development, Overview, Directions in
There is no universally accepted definition of a food crisis or acute food
insecurity, but a working definition for Oxfam is a situation of unusually
severe food insecurity that threatens peoples lives and/or livelihoods. This
happens when people experience: a large reduction in their major source of
food due to external shock and are unable to make up the difference through
new strategies; the prevalence of malnutrition is abnormally high for the time
of year, and this cannot be accounted for by either health or other factors;
people are using coping strategies that are damaging their livelihoods in the
longer term, or engaging in illegal or immoral activities to gain food. A famine
is an accelerated deterioration in peoples lives which occurs when they are
unable to meet their needs through survival strategies or are displaced into
camp environments, and malnutrition and deaths increase.
Kenyan government figures.
AU (2005) Status of Food Security and Prospects for Agricultural
Development in Africa, and CSOPNU (30 March 2006) Counting the Cost:
Twenty Years of War in Northern Uganda.
UNICEF define undernutrition or malnutrition - as the outcome of
insufficient food intake (hunger) and repeated infectious diseases.
Undernutrition includes being underweight for ones age, too short for ones

29 Causing Hunger an overview of the food crisis in Africa, Oxfam

Briefing Paper, July 2006
minerals (micronutrient malnutrition). UNICEF (2006) Progress for Children,
A Report Card on Nutrition, Number 4.
Currently the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) does not
have an official definition of humanitarian assistance, only a category called
Emergency and Distress Relief. The Good Humanitarian Donorship initiative
is working on a common definition of humanitarian action, but it is a complex
area. While the main purpose of development assistance is to eradicate
poverty, the objective of humanitarian assistance is primarily to save lives by
helping people meet their needs for clean water, food, shelter, and
livelihoods. However, responses to emergencies can go well beyond that,
and could include activities to support livelihoods and reduce vulnerability to
future crises which blur into the development category. Assistance may also
involve actions to protect peoples safety. Oxfam defines humanitarian
assistance as assistance which is provided according to humanitarian
principles in order to address an exceptional and widespread threat to life,
health, or basic subsistence, which is beyond the coping capacity of the
individuals and community.
Development Initiatives (200405) Global Humanitarian Assistance,
OCHA Financial Tracking System,
OCHA ( 2005) Humanitarian Response Review.
There are various Early Warning Systems. Some are global like the
Global Information and Early Warning System (GIEWS) and the FAOs Food
Insecurity Vulnerability Information and Mapping Systems (FIVIMS). Others,
like the USAID-sponsored Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS
NET), operate across the world but on a country-by-country basis. There are
also regional systems such as the Southern African Development
Community and Sahels EWS networks.
In Malawi in 2001, NGOs and churches predicted a food crisis as early as
September, but because official crop assessments had exaggerated
cassava production, an emergency was not declared until late February
2002, when the famine was already at its peak (Stephen Devereux, personal
Oxfam assessment.
Oxfams criteria for intervention, for example, includes the risk of
exceptionally high rates of acute malnutrition (e.g. >15 per cent) and the
inability to meet minimum food needs (i.e. 2,100 kcals according to
SPHERE) without damaging livelihoods, health, and dignity. Monitoring the
use of damaging coping strategies enables Oxfam to intervene early and
prevent malnutrition and hunger-related deaths.
Food aid is the donation of internationally sourced food to recipient
households, communities, or governments, either as concessional sales or
free of charge. It can be provided in the form of food (in-kind food aid) or as

Causing Hunger an overview of the food crisis in Africa, Oxfam 30

Briefing Paper, July 2006
cash resources for the local procurement of food. Emergency food aid
generally consists of the free distribution of general food rations,
supplementary and therapeutic feeding. It accounted for 58 per cent of total
food aid in 2004, having declined by 37 per cent in 2004 compared to 2003
(International Food Aid Information System, INTERFAIS, World Food
Programme). But food aid is also provided in non-emergency situations as
project food aid (development projects which use food aid or which are
financed by the sale of food aid) and programme aid (which is aid provided
as budget-support to governments in the form of concessional sales, the
revenue of which is used for development). Virtually all programme food aid
is sold on recipient country markets to generate cash to assist countries with
balance of payments transfers. The latter is normally for long-term
development projects. In practice, there is some overlap as emergency food
aid activities in protracted crises can resemble project food aid (OECD,
December 2004, The Development Effect of Food aid, Does Tying
Development Initiatives (2003), Global Humanitarian Assistance, quoted
in Jaspars, S, 2006, From Food Crisis to Fair Trade: Livelihoods Analysis,
Protection and Support in Emergencies, March 2006.
ODI (2006) Saving Lives through Livelihoods: Critical gaps in the
response to the drought in the Greater Horn of Africa, HPG Briefing Note.
In Malawi and Zambia in 2002/03, donors overreacted to a projected food
deficit and flooded the market with aid, undermining prices and hurting local
producers (Stephen Devereux, June 2002, State of Disaster, ActionAid).
OECD (2004) op.cit.
Oxfam calculations based on data from the Canadian International
Development Agency and its contractors.
World Food Programme (2004) INTERFAIS, Annual Report.
OECD (2004) op.cit.
Congressional Research Service Report for Congress May 2, 2005
International Food Aid: U.S. and Other Donor Contributions.
Oxfam briefing paper (March 2005) Food Aid or Hidden Dumping,
Separating Wheat from Chaff.
Amartya Sen famously pointed out that famines were often caused by the
result of entitlement failure - or people's lack of access to food - rather than
food shortages as previously understood. Entitlement failure may result from
production labour shocks - loss of jobs/fall in wages, trade , inheritance or
transfer shocks. Sen. A, 1981, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on
Entitlement and Deprivation, Oxford, Clarendon.
Oxfam (2006) Kenya food crisis brief (internal document).
FAO (2005) op.cit.
S. Lautze et al. (2003) Risk and Vulnerability in Ethiopia: Learning from
the Past, Responding to the Present, Preparing for the Future, A report for
the US Agency for International Development.

31 Causing Hunger an overview of the food crisis in Africa, Oxfam

Briefing Paper, July 2006
Oxfam food aid policy (internal document).
C. Pantaleo and S. Jaspars (2005) Cash Transfer Programming in
Emergencies, Oxfam Skills and Practice series, Oxford: Oxfam.
Australia now permits up to 67 per cent of its food aid to be procured
locally; the EC permits unlimited procurement under specified circumstances
from a list of developing countries; and in September 2005 Canada agreed
to permit up to 50 per cent of its government food aid budget to be used for
local or regional procurement, up from the previous 10 per cent. See
Canadian Foodgrains Bank/Oxfam Canada (2005) Increasing Local
Purchase Flexibility in Canadian Food Aid Procurement An idea whose
time has come. The UK, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands
also source their food through local purchase and unrestricted tendering
(OECD 2004, op.cit ).
Whereas in 2004 the EC sourced 11 per cent of its total food aid
domestically, Australia and Canada sourced 82 and 83 per cent
Needs assessment should include assessments of indicators on access to
food as well as production (including prices and market functioning) and
political and economic vulnerability.
Other methods include using the local banking system or shops to deliver
aid; limiting knowledge of aid/cash deliveries; limiting access to bank
transactions; disbursing cash/aid immediately; varying schedules and
destinations for delivery; making small and frequent disbursements; using
civilian protectors such as respected village elders in convoys.
The issue is part of a much broader debate about how governments
should best fulfill their obligations to protect their citizens. The social
protection programmes discussed here are seen as being different from
temporary safety nets introduced by the World Bank, whose rationale is
more to compensate people for the transitional costs of adjustment. The
protection programmes are also different from many traditional social
security, social welfare, or insurance systems, which are mainly targeted at
people who are unable to work, often formal-sector employees, and which
may entail personal contributions.
DFID (October 2005) Social Transfers and chronic poverty: emerging
evidence and the challenge ahead, a DFID practice paper.
Stephen Devereux, personal communication.
In all regions of the world, in the absence of determined public policies,
people who live on low incomes tend to have worse diets than those who
are better off (UNICEF 2006, op.cit )
World Bank (2005) World Development Indicators.
In this view, a political culture of clientilism and winner takes all means
that leadership is focused more on holding onto power than promoting
development. State capacity is weak because state jobs are allocated to
accommodate clientilist demands rather than by merit; the state budget is
diverted to salaries; tax collection is low due to exemptions; there is less

Causing Hunger an overview of the food crisis in Africa, Oxfam 32

Briefing Paper, July 2006
money for investment, etc. These problems are seen as a crucial factor in
explaining the divergence between the sub-Saharan African and East Asian
experiences. (M. Lockwood, 2005, The State Theyre In: An Agenda for
International Action on Poverty in Africa, Rugby: ITDG publishing).
FAO (2005) op.cit. Amartya Sen has also famously stated that: "No
democracy," although he has also acknowledged the comparative
ineffectiveness of democracy in preventing regular hunger (Sen, A, 1999,
Democracy as Freedom Anchor).
While sub-Saharan Africa has received record flows of bilateral
development aid, increasing from around $1 billion in 1960 to more than $30
billion in 1991, it fell to less than $20 billion in 2000 (AU 2006).
M. Lockwood (2005) op.cit.
M. Lockwood (2005) op.cit.
UNDP (2005) Human Development Report.
One view suggests that as a result of free-market policies and cutbacks in
development aid in the 1990s, African economies and budgets contracted,
and elites were prompted to find new forms of independent wealth creation.
State jobs increasingly became seen more as a way of extracting rents,
rather than a salary (for example from access to foreign exchange,
subsidised credit, fertilizers, import licences), and elites increasingly turned
to illegal or shadow trade in drugs, diamonds, arms, smuggling, poaching,
and slaving, exacerbating conflict. In other words, clientilist politics adapted
to, rather than being disposed of by, economic liberal reforms (M. Duffield).
Commission for Africa (March 2005) Our Common Interest.
On average childrens underweight prevalence in rural areas is almost
double that for their urban counterparts. (UNICEF 2006, op cit). According to
the FAO, about half of the worlds hungry people are from smallholder
farming communities, another 20 per cent are rural landless and about 10
per cent live in communities whose livelihoods depend on herding, fishing,
or forestry resources. The remaining 20 per cent live in cities (FAO 2004,
See NEPAD (2005) Framework Document, and Commission for Africa
(2005) Our Common Interest.
FAO (2004) op.cit.
59, and
DFID (December 2005) Growth and poverty reduction: the role of
agriculture, A DFID policy paper, and J. D. Sachs (March 2005) The End of
Poverty; Economic Possibilities for our Time, New York: Earth Institute.
This money would be channelled to improve land and water management,
rural infrastructure and marketing, increasing food supply and reducing
hunger, agricultural research, and technology.

33 Causing Hunger an overview of the food crisis in Africa, Oxfam

Briefing Paper, July 2006
See NEPADs Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development
Programme (CAADP) 2003)
AU (2005) op.cit.
Carl K. Eicher (2003) Flashback: Fifty Years of Donor Aid to African
Agriculture, Michigan State University.
C. Sahley et al. (2005) The Governance Dimension of Food Security in
Malawi, USAID p.18.
UNDP Human Development Report 2007, forthcoming, figures taken from
OECD data base. Donor aid to agriculture generally dropped from 11.4 per
cent of all aid in 19831984 to 3.2 per cent in 20032004, with only Australia
and Austria increasing the proportion of aid to that sector. The UK and US
lowered their proportion of aid from 11.4 per cent apiece to 4.1 per cent and
1.5 per cent respectively. France and Germanys fell from 8.5 per cent and
9.1 per cent, respectively, to 2.2 per cent and 2.9 per cent. Canadas
dropped from 16.1 per cent to 7.9 per cent over that period (OECD, DAC,
Development Cooperation Report 2005, Table 18, Major Aid Uses by
Individual DAC Donors).
AU (2005) op.cit. and FAO (2005) The State of Food and Agriculture.
AU (2005) op.cit.
Oxfam livelihood and development support includes: (a) agricultural
support access to free or subsidised fertilizer and other inputs, such as
seeds; farmers fairs to improve access to appropriate seeds; training for
small-scale vegetable gardeners; community grain storage and seed banks;
water conservation through the rehabilitation of dykes, dams, and wells;
regeneration of pasture and reforestation linked to community training on
environmental management; crop diversification and labour saving
technologies; (b) livestock support restocking of animals through animal
fairs and free vouchers; veterinary care, vaccination programmes, and
training of para-vets; replanting of fodder plants and construction of fodder
banks; repair of water holes and other water sources for animals, such as
natural wadis and ponds; training in improved management of flocks; (c)
income support cash transfers, cash or food for work, micro-credit and
insurance; off-farm income generation; (d) improving access to markets
price stabilisation, providing market information, subsidising transport to
markets. Oxfam also runs campaigns to increase peoples access to health
and education.
Commission for Africa (2005), Our Common Interest. Report of the
Commission for Africa.
Lisa C. Smith and L. Haddad (2000) Overcoming Child Malnutrition in
Developing Countries: Past Achievements and Future Choices,
International Food Policy Research Institute.
Africa Commission (2005) op.cit.
Palmer, R. internal

Causing Hunger an overview of the food crisis in Africa, Oxfam 34

Briefing Paper, July 2006
Commercial risk is seen as particularly high in rural areas because of the
low volumes traded, small numbers of participants, poor infrastructure, high
costs of transport and communication, low productivity and incomes, and
limited sources of alternative income. These risks include: natural shocks
such as the weather; price risks due to volatility; economic co-ordination
risks such as traders being unable to buy harvests from farmers unless they
receive credit and inputs from other providers; and risks of opportunism such
as lenders at risk from defaults, farmers at risk from low prices after harvest,
or low quality inputs failures. See A. Dorward, J. Kydd and C. Poulton (2005)
Beyond Liberalisation: Development Coordination Policies for African
Smallholder Agriculture, IDS Bulletin 36(2).
Dorward, Kydd and Poulton (2005) op.cit.
FAO (2005) op.cit.
Dorward, Kydd and Poulton (2005) op.cit.
In Malawi, for example, the scaling down of grain reserves and removal of
price controls under International Monetary Fund policies in the 1990s led to
increased volatility and food price hikes. In Niger, the scaling down of grain
reserves meant that the government did not have sufficient grain to stabilise
food prices during the 2005 crisis. The removal of input subsidies in Malawi
in the 1990s also led to massive increases in the cost of fertilizers. Where
private traders have moved in to fill the gap, they have often done so on
highly unfavourable terms for poor farmers. In Niger, merchants buy grain
from indebted farmers in remote areas and hoard it until the next harvest,
when it can be sold at higher prices (Oxfam 2002, Death on the Doorstep of
the Summit, Oxfam Briefing Paper; K. Watkins 1995, Oxfam Poverty Report,
Oxford: Oxfam; and assessments by Oxfam staff in Niger).
C. Sahley et al. (2005) op.cit.
S. Levy (2005) Starter Packs: a strategy to fight hunger in developing
countries?, CABI Pubilshing.
D. Booth et al. (2006) Drivers of Change and Development in Malawi,
Working Paper 261, ODI.
DFID (December 2005) op.cit.
S. Devereux, Food Security in Ethiopia, DFID, p.11.
T. Otsuki, J.S.Wilson and M. Sewadeh (2000) Saving two in a billion: a
case study to quantify the trade effect of European food safety standards on
African exports, World Bank.
Oxfam (2002) Cultivating Poverty: The Impact of US Cotton Subsidies on
Africa, Oxfam Briefing Paper.
According to the FAO, the proportion of food emergencies that can be
considered human-induced has increased over time. Globally, conflict and
economic failures were cited as the main cause of more than 35 per cent of
food emergencies between 1992 and 2004, compared to around 15 per cent
in the period from 1986 to 1991. In many cases, natural disasters are

35 Causing Hunger an overview of the food crisis in Africa, Oxfam

Briefing Paper, July 2006
compounded by human-induced disasters, leading to prolonged complex
emergencies (FAO 2005 op.cit.)
AU (2005) op.cit.
UNDP (2005) op.cit.
Anthony Nygong (2005) Impacts of Climate Change in the Tropics: the
African Experience', University of Jos, Nigeria.
UNAIDS (2005) AIDS epidemic update, SSA.
UNDP (2005) op.cit.
UNAIDS (2005) op.cit.
UNAIDS (August 2005) Resource needs for an expanded response to
AIDS in low and middle income countries.
Other measures may include: ensuring that micro-credit schemes take
into account the needs of people who are ill (for example, do not penalise
them for missing a meeting); conducting community research to identify
impacts and ways of helping communities, including awareness-raising and
prevention; supporting community projects to offer practical help to members
of the community; empowering people to get involved in campaigns to
ensure access to affordable medicines and care.
Anthony Nygong (2005) op.cit.
Some increases in precipitation and rainfall are predicted for parts of West
and Eastern Africa.
J. Lorimer (1999) op.cit.
J. Lorimer (1999) op.cit.
Christian Aid (2006) The climate of poverty: facts fears and hope,
Select Committee on International Development Memoranda
(11January 2005), Joint memorandum submitted by Suliman Baldo, James
Morton, Roland Marchal and Alex de Waal, Darfur in 2004, The Many Faces
of a Conflict, A Working Paper,
IRIN (13 March 2006) Environmental health key to increasing incidence
of drought.
Internal analysis by Oxfam staff.
See AU/NEPAD Environmental Action Plan.
See for example the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development
Programme (CAADP) of AU/NEPAD; and the report from the AU Ministerial
Conference of Ministers of 1 Jan1 Feb 2006, Status of Food Security and
Prospects for Agricultural Development in Africa, Bamako, Mali.

Causing Hunger an overview of the food crisis in Africa, Oxfam 36

Briefing Paper, July 2006
Oxfam International July 2006
This paper was written by Ruth Mayne with assistance from Alex Renton, Michael
Bailey, Nicki Bennett, Emma Naylor, Matthew Snell, Chris Leather, Silke Pietzsch,
Ann Witteveen and Mark Fried. It is part of a series of papers written to inform
public debate on development and humanitarian policy issues.
The text may be used free of charge for the purposes of advocacy, campaigning,
a fee may be charged. E-mail

37 Causing Hunger an overview of the food crisis in Africa, Oxfam

Briefing Paper, July 2006
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Published by Oxfam International July 2006
Published by Oxfam GB for Oxfam International under ISBN 978-1-84814-266-4