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Hungry AIDS orphans in Malawi

According to the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), the number of Africans living on less than US$1 a day increased by 20% from 1990 to 298 million in 2004. In global terms, Africa’s share of world poverty rose from 19% in 1990 to 31% in 2004. But poverty in Africa is not just growing, it is also intensifying: IFPRI estimates that the number of Africans living on less than US$0.50 a day rose by a third from 1990 to 121 million in 2004. Three quarters of the world’s “ultra poor” live in sub-Saharan Africa.

That such a situation persists today is offensive, but that it should persist when world governments and development agencies around the world have endorsed and committed themselves to a Millennium Development Goal (MDG) to halve hunger by 2015 must raise serious concerns regarding competence, commitment and accountability.

These concerns should not just be levied against the international community at large, but also at the governments of the individual countries where poverty is rising despite the fact that African economies are growing. Economic growth is not being translated into increases in small farmers’ income, improved job opportunities for the poor or better wages for the low paid.

As if things weren’t bad enough, they have started to get a whole lot worse as global shocks in key commodity prices, from fuel to fertiliser and basic foods, threaten not only to pull more people into poverty but also worsen the situation of those already suffering.

At the recent 2008 World Food Summit in Rome, pledges were made to increase provision of food, seed and fertiliser support to countries least able to cope -- but realistically these interventions will do little more than provide short-term relief from a chronic and fundamental crisis. Most analysts concur that higher prices are here to stay and should be viewed more in terms of a structural correction than a mere temporary anomaly.

In contrast to these emergency band-aid measures, there is a growing body of evidence showing that social protection in the form of regular, predictable cash transfers to the most vulnerable groups in society are remarkably effective in alleviating poverty and protecting people from further economic shocks.

Some of this evidence comes from South Africa, where study after study shows pensions and grants have a measurable impact on health and nutrition in recipient households. Other evidence comes from a plethora of pilot projects in neighbouring countries. Short-term cash transfer schemes in several regions of Zambia, for example, have shown similar impacts. Unlike food aid, in addition to providing health benefits, cash transfers enable beneficiaries to acquire assets such as livestock and seed, free children to attend school (rather than having to work to assist their families to survive) and stimulate local economies. This has spin-offs for food production as small-scale farmers reap the benefits of flourishing local markets.

Inexplicably, despite all this solid evidence, policy-makers and donors remain sceptical. In South Africa there is resistance to expanding the grants system while in neighbouring countries international donors procrastinate by continuing to demand more evidence and more pilots. This, despite the fact that most developed nations spend large proportions of their budgets on domestic social protection programmes with no corresponding demand for evidence of impact. For their part, governments in southern Africa refuse to consider ‘hand-outs’, or continue to insist that social protection is unaffordable.

Ultimately the question is not one of affordability, but of political will. In 2004, for example, Lesotho’s government instituted an old-age pension against the advice of international financial institutions. To make it more affordable, it made the grant amount fairly small and the age of eligibility fairly high – at 70. Today, some 77 000 pensioners and a quarter of all households benefit from the monthly grant of R200. The pension is so popular that to cancel it now would mean political suicide for the ruling party.

Lesotho shows that when there is political will, the money can be found. Surely, social protection needs to take priority over arms deals, new parliament buildings, and any number of wasteful vanity projects.

The real question is not whether we can afford to implement or expand social protection, but whether we can afford not to do so. Unless we urgently implement policy options which address the needs of the poor in a manner that alleviates rather than aggravates the situation and in a way that respects the poor as an economic asset rather a social burden, there could be catastrophic consequences for social, economic and political stability, of which recent episodes of civil unrest experienced across the continent from Senegal to South Africa may only be a glimpse of what is yet to come. We may, as one leading politician put it, be on the verge of a “food revolution”.