Supplementary memorandum submitted by
Save the Children UK
REASON FOR
SUBMISSION
This submission to the International Development
Select Committee from Save the Children is a response to a direct
request by the IDC (during oral evidence given by Alex Rees) to
provide additional written evidence on a novel cash and food transfer
programme in Swaziland.
SWAZILAND CASE
STUDY
1. Save the Children has been operating
an innovative cash and food response programme in Swaziland with
WFP, and with financial support from the Department for International
Development (DFID).
2. The programme was in response to drought
which struck parts of Swaziland last year, threatening the livelihoods
and lives of already precarious populations. The programme provides
a mix of food aid (via WFP) and cash (via Save the Children in
partnership with Standard Bank and local rural post office branches),
which is designed to protect the nutrition of children and their
families while also helping them to get back on their feet so
they can produce for themselves again this year. The results so
far are extremely positive.
3. The ground-breaking move to use cash
transfers as a complement to food has proven to be a very effective
for several reasons:
— Humanitarian needs of families have
been met using cash transfers. This is demonstrated by families
using the money to buy food, seeds, tools, livestock, and others
essential goods.
— Monitoring strongly indicates that
families receiving cash transfers in addition to the food ration
have used the money to buy a more diverse range of foods for their
children than households that received food only. A diverse diet
is important to avoid chronic malnutrition which is very high
in Swaziland. Monitoring indicates a low misuse of cash by recipients,
in line with experience from other countries.
— Cash has been used by parents and
child headed households to maintain children in school by paying
school fees during a difficult time keeping children safe and
keeping them learning.
— Cash has been used to invest in livestock,
and other critical items to establish small businesses that will
go some way towards making families stronger in the face of future
difficulties[115].
— Families, and particularly women,
have been empowered by having the choice on what to spend the
money.
— There was no evidence that cash transfers
exerted inflationary pressure on local markets.
— Markets have responded effectively
and positively. In addition, the injection of cash has stimulated
the local economy during a difficult time.
— Cash proved more reliable than food
aid supplies. There were some months when there was no government
food to distribute because of supply problems, whilst cash was
transferred on schedule each month.
— Monitoring suggests that most families
receiving cash transfers are in favour of future transfers of
cash as well as food because it gives them flexibility.
4. On balance the pilot programme was extremely
successful and provides learning for stakeholders in Swaziland
and in the Southern Africa Region. Members of Parliament in Swaziland
are actively discussing the initiative in Parliament and many
are advocating for use of cash transfers in their own constituencies.
The programme, as an emergency response, finishes in April 2008.
However, for the poorest families and child headed households
there is no formal social protection system for hunger and their
problems are long-term requiring more sophisticated and predictable
responses to hunger. DFID could play a role supporting this process.
5. The World Food Programme should be sanctioned
by its Board and by donors to provide a menu of options including
food, cash and vouchers depending on each assessment of the situation
in any particular country. WFP will need support build its operations
capacity to achieve this. These changes will improve the effectiveness
of humanitarian aid and will help make WFP relevant and fit for
purpose in the 21st Century.
6. There should be no automatic assumption
that cash transfers add to inflationary pressures. That said,
markets must be constantly monitored when implementing cash transfer
programmes. A negligible inflationary effect is demonstrated during
the life of the cash transfer programme in Swaziland. This is
despite significant increases in demand for local and imported
foods from families. Food prices for all staples (maize and rice)
and other key food sources (eg vegetable oil) have remained largely
flat or have increased only very slightly between November 2007
and April 2008 (despite considerable global pressures on food
prices). This is demonstrated in the chart below:
7. The WFP has some way to go to ensure
that its various operations are aligned in terms of their support
for innovative cash programmes like that in Swaziland. Save the
Children UK encountered different perspectives on the programme
from different parts of WFP. Our perception is that the WFP Swaziland
Country Office considered the cash transfer intervention to be
something of a threat to existing operations. On the whole, "higher
level" parts of WFP were more supportive. WFP's regional
office[116]
was sufficiently interested to grant Save the Children UK 40,000
USD to assist with monitoring and evaluation. At headquarters
in Rome key individuals have expressed interest to learn from
the experience. WFP needs to align its whole operation but particularly
country offices with its relatively rapidly developing policies
and communications in this area.
8. Changes are required in the approach
that WFP uses to tackle hunger. WFP has the opportunity to strengthen
government systems to respond to hunger in a predictable manner
rather than an ad hoc (emergency assessment and then response)
manner. The food security outlook in Swaziland for 2008-09 looks
poor again, especially for those in the drier Lowveld areas. The
on-going needs in these and other areas highlight the structural
problems that underlie current poverty and hunger in Swaziland.
There is a need for WFP to assist the Government to develop a
formal safety net system, perhaps a cash benefit and other measures
targeting the most vulnerable, because hunger is predictable and
chronic malnutrition is high. WFP's role in strengthening such
systems remains peripheral rather than a mainstream activity.
The safety net system should be capable of choosing between food,
cash and vouchers to meet the more acute needs of people, while
policies and practice are formulated by government and other stakeholders
to reduce poverty more generally. WFP is potentially well placed
to assist with this kind of role and Swaziland is one of many
examples where this is relevant. Ultimately, aiding Government
to build safety net systems may not involve WFP shifting any food
or cash itself as it focuses on building Government capacity to
meet the challenge of hunger reduction and progress towards MDG
1.
THE CONTEXT
IN SWAZILAND
9. In response to severe drought during
the 2006-07 agricultural season and rising food prices in early
2007 Save the Children joined with other NGOs, the UN and the
Government of Swaziland in a national response to the crisis.
Save the Children has been operating an innovative cash and food
transfer programme for 7,600 families (45,000 people) facing humanitarian
difficulties between September 2007 and April 2008. Swaziland
was and remains in a precarious economic and social situation
because of a combination of factors that worsen the prospects
for Swazi children.
10. In this context Save the Children specifically
set out to make aid more effective and challenge the "business
as usual" mindset of the humanitarian community to meet the
assessed humanitarian needs of over 400,000 people (35% of the
population). Discussions on coordination led to Save the Children
covering 45,000 of the total. In this and in previous years, the
National Disaster Management Authority, together with the World
Food Programme are the key players in the small Kingdom of Swaziland
when it comes to deciding how to respond to humanitarian needs.
Both have carried out large food aid assistance programmes in
different parts of the country in 2007-08. Since 1992 the Swazi
government in collaboration with WFP has responded to deficits
in peoples' ability to access food and income through regular
food distributions. This has become the standard response mechanism[117].
11. Cash transfers are appropriate in Swaziland
for several reasons. First it is a market based economy with good
infrastructure in a peaceful context. Second, while there is a
national food deficit the country has plentiful access to purchase
and import from the grain markets of South Africa and Swaziland's
currency is firmly pegged to the South African Rand. Third, most
families in Swaziland buy the majority of their food from shops
using cash they have earned and supplement this with production
from their small farms.
PROGRAMME IMPLEMENTATION
12. In spite of the broadly conducive environment,
the unpredictable nature of markets and the innovative nature
of the programme demanded an approach and a donor willing to challenge
these norms. Prior to the design of the programme it was necessary
to perform two main steps—first, a thorough assessment of
local and national food markets; and second, to consider how cash
may reach the intended people and what level of transfer might
be appropriate. Once these technical elements were satisfactorily
addressed and key stakeholders in Government supported the efforts
to innovate, the DFID Regional Office in Pretoria provided the
necessary financial support (£1.34 million) to turn plans
into action.
13. Cash has been transferred to all adult
household heads through private bank accounts held at Standard
Bank and opened with the support of the Save the Children team
for those who had not accessed the banking system before. The
household heads have basic savings accounts and can access money
through the ATM, the bank or, for the life of the project, through
the Post Office. Some of the advantages of such an approach are
the security of funds, access to modern financial services, ability
to save and deposit moneys and the transfer of remittances from
family members working in other countries. We have also educated
new account holders about bank charges and dispelled myths such
as "the bank steals money" or "those machines will
eat our cards". In future we hope that increased bank utilisation
will also increase saving patterns and access to credit, allowing
families to further invest in their livelihoods and secure their
futures.
14. Families supported by the Save the Children
programme in Swaziland receive on a monthly basis:
— 30 Emalangeni[118]
(£2) per person per family (calculated as half of the cost
of half of a typical food ration),
— E20 (£1.3) per family (non food
items—eg soap, washing powder, cooking utensils) and
— E25 (£1.67) / household (transport)
on a monthly basis to get the distribution point.
— They also receive a half food ration,
donated in kind by the Swaziland National Disaster Management
Agency (NDMA) or WFP. For example, a household of six people will
receive 36kg of maize, 5.7kg of beans and 2.25 litres of vegetable
oil as well as E225 (GBP15).
15. The aim is to give households the freedom
to decide what they would like to buy, affording children and
adults access to a more diverse and suitable diet. It has also
allowed families to choose their priorities, be they healthcare,
education or something else. As part of this one of the objectives
of the response was to protect and /or promote livelihoods so
that households will not find themselves in a worse situation
the following year. For this reason a sum of E470 (GBP32) was
transferred to each household, in addition to the transfers described
above, at the start of the programme in November 2007. This was
designed to assist households make the most of the agricultural
season, but its use was more diverse. In some cases it was used
to buy food in bulk but was often used to make productive investments
in poultry, seeds and fertilizer amongst other things. A further
additional sum has been transferred in the final April 2008 transfer
to enable families to make further investments for the future[119].
16. While the use of cash has been ground-breaking
for humanitarian operations in Swaziland, the mechanism of delivery
of the cash has been equally pioneering. There are many lessons
for humanitarian agencies, including WFP from this experience.
115 For instance, a woman from Phonjwane Lindiwe Mamba
used the money to invest in a poultry business, making an initial
investment in 100 chicks. After starting the business following
the first lump sum from the programme she invited other women
to join and invest with her. In December they planted cow peas
and ground-nuts and are now harvesting them. They made contact
with a businessman in Manzini and there is now an agreement to
supply 200 chickens / month. They are also selling the ground-nuts
in the local market. The programme has helped her to develop a
sustainable livelihood to support her family. Back
116
Specifically the interest came from WFP's small Special Initiative
on Cash and Voucher Programming (SICVP) that is focused on building
up evidence on what works in relation to cash transfer programming
and Back
117
WFP has developed programmes that include targeted food distribution,
school feeding, orphan and vulnerable child feeding, clinic feeding
and support to families affected by HIV/AIDS. Back
118
1 Emalangeni = 1 South African Rand Back
119
A formal external evaluation will take place in June 2008. Back
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