Breaking the hunger cycle in Zambia

Related pages: Zambia country homepage | External linkCash or food? (Developments Magazine) | UK action on hunger in Africa (June, 2006)

 

Villager in Kazungula district, southern Zambia (image courtesy of CARE INTERNATIONAL)

Image courtesy of Care International

In Zambia, DFID aims to support an improved response to chronic hunger by working with the Zambian government to develop and implement a national Social Protection (SP) programme to support the poorest with reliable transfers of cash, seeds and/or food.

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

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

Safety net programmes such as social protection break this cycle by providing small payments of cash and/or food or fertiliser and seeds (depending on needs) on a well-timed, regular and long-term basis to the neediest.

In Nkwaleni village in Kazungula district in the southern province of Zambia, this programme is targeting the ten percent most destitute in the district and reducing extreme poverty for those most vulnerable. This includes the elderly, widows, those caring for orphans, and households where the head of the household is chronically ill. More about social protection and safety nets

What difference does this make?

Muyangwa Liplana Mushoko (Zambia): "I used to have to beg from people in the village to get food. These days when I go and collect the monthly payment from the nearby school, I can buy mealie meal and other things I need. The money is helping me to buy food so that at least when my grandson Joe comes back from school he can have a meal." Read more about external hyperlinkMuyangwa's story (CARE website)

DFID is committed to providing £14.5 million over 5 years for the scaling up of the national social protection scheme.

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Key facts

  • DFID also has a £10million Programme Partnership Agreement with CARE International to pilot a number of different Social Protection approaches over a period of 4 years (2004-8). These pilots are informing the development of the national Social Protection Strategy
  • In addition to this longer-term work, DFID responded to the 2004/5 drought by contributing approximately £5.5 million to the relief response. This included support to WFP for food aid (approx. £3.5m), Oxfam to pilot relief cash transfers for 80,000 households (approx. £1m), UNICEF to support treatment of severe malnutrition (£0.4m), and a local NGO, Programme against Malnutrition, for distribution of agricultural inputs to 20,000 households (£0.5m).
  • These different initiatives feed into achieving Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on Eradication of Extreme Poverty and Hunger (MDG 1), Achieving Universal Primary Education (MDG 2), as well as ensuring Environmental Sustainability (MDG 7).