Social Assistance and Coping With Crises in Borno, Nigeria

This paper examines the relationship between social assistance, violent conflict, and intersecting crises, and considers how social assistance can help offset erosive forms of coping that could otherwise drive poverty and food insecurity.

To investigate these issues, the study draws on newly collected household data covering 1,000 survey respondents in 2023 from the Konduga and Maiduguri Municipal Council local government areas in Borno, Nigeria. Borno has been an epicentre for violence over the past 15 years, and has experienced a range of intersecting crises.

Study findings indicate that 43 per cent of households experienced disruptions to income or agriculture, or asset loss, either due to conflict, flooding, or drought. Of these households, 41 per cent reported that more than half of their income source was lost. Despite the negative effects of crises, only 1 in 10 households received social assistance in the year preceding the survey, mainly through non-governmental organisations. This indicates that social assistance is simply not getting through to the people who need it.

Perhaps as a result, households are increasingly drawing on negative and even erosive forms of coping – for example, by being less able to save, less able to make investments, and increasing reliance on loans that together could drive downward mobility. The paper concludes with broad-brush implications for social assistance programmes to become more effective amidst violence and climate-related disasters.

The paper is authored by Vidya Diwakar, Adedeji Peter Adeniran, Emmanuel Nwosu, Fidelis Obaniyi, Chisom Udora

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The Capability Approach and the Sustainable Development Goals: Inter/Multi/Trans Disciplinary Perspectives

This book demonstrates how the capability approach to human development can contribute to the realisation of the 2015 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The capability approach dictates that success should not be measured by economic indicators but by people leading meaningful, free, fulfilled, happy, or satisfied lives. Drawing from a range of disciplinary perspectives, this book argues that it is vital that the focus for the SDGs should shift to benefiting the most vulnerable. Case studies from across Asia, Africa, Latin America (Global South), and the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia (Global North) consider how the capability approach can contribute as a practical framework to achieving the SDGs’ ambitions for social, economic, political, and legal progress.

The chapter on "education and sustained poverty escapes in sub-Saharan Africa" authored by CPAN analyzes the interrelationship between education (SDG 4) and sustained poverty reduction (SDG 1). It draws attention to the role of education as an asset supporting resilience, as well as other factors that combine with education to contribute to capabilities that enable sustained escapes from poverty. To investigate this relationship, the chapter synthesizes mixed-methods research by CPAN in Tanzania, Rwanda, Niger, Malawi, Ethiopia, Uganda, and rural Kenya. 

The chapter argues that a combination of multi-level factors supporting education has the transformative potential to convert into sustained escapes from poverty. Indeed, people construct strategies for escaping poverty using education as an instrumental asset, yet few achieve sustained escapes. To promote sustained escapes, there is a need for more and better-quality education certainly, but also for multi-level conversion factors that can contribute to education and wider wellbeing outcomes. These are policies that can be consciously directed as well as people’s own adaptive strategies, alongside processes of social change. Examples of factors that support education include labor market links, livelihood diversification, social networks, spousal collaboration, shifts in cultural and gender norms to support girls’ education, and an enabling policy context. This combination involving multiple conversion factors alongside education is argued to be ‘transformative’ in paving the way for sustained poverty escapes. 

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Impacts of the Government of Zambia’s Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic on Poverty

COVID-19 tested the social welfare system that successive governments have been building in Zambia over the last two decades. Zambia had one of the highest poverty rates in the world going into the COVID-19 pandemic as well as overlapping vulnerabilities related to climate change, macroeconomic instability, and high external debt. These and other challenges exposed many people living above the poverty line to impoverishment and pushed households living in poverty further towards destitution.

Civil Society for Poverty Reduction (CSPR), the Chronic Poverty Advisory Network (CPAN), and the Institute of Social and Economic Research (INESOR) have been monitoring the impacts of the pandemic on people living in or near poverty in Zambia since early 2021 in three districts – Lusaka, Kabwe and Chipata - about the reach and impact of these policies. This policy brief reviews the Government of Zambia’s key policies to mitigate the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on people living in or near poverty and summarises insights from people affected by these policies about what they have achieved and how they can be improved.

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Poverty, Hunger and Jobs: Pandemic Update and Recovery Prospects

The COVID-19 pandemic and intersecting crises— including climate change, conflict, debt, and the ‘triple F’ crisis (food, fuel, finance)— have reversed progress on a range of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), increasing the number of people in poverty, contributing to a dramatic rise in hunger and food insecurity, increasing gender inequalities, and constraining the effectiveness of interventions to promote pro-poor livelihoods and decent jobs.

In many countries, the post-COVID-19 recovery has been slow and incomplete. To promote the joining up of SDGs (1- no poverty, 2- zero hunger, 8- decent work and economic growth), CPAN/IDS, IFPRI, Southern Voice, and the Global Donor Platform for Rural Development co-convened a three-day virtual international workshop in June 2023 on “poverty, hunger and jobs”. Its aim was to synthesise latest knowledge and data about the effects and the effectiveness of policy responses on these issues, and to work out its policy/programming implications to re-establish positive development progress on hunger, jobs and poverty.

This brief outlines key takeaways and recommendations from the workshop presentations and discussions.

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Measures to Mitigate Pandemic Restrictions

Policy responses to the Covid-19 pandemic in the global South were dominated by movement restrictions and lockdowns imposed in the global North, and not always relevant to the countries or geographical areas where they were imposed.

Countries must be free to decide how to manage a global crisis, so their governments can take decisions that are in the best interests of their citizens, with specific reference to the poorest people, whose lives are already challenging. Many countries’ political and public finance systems could not support mitigating measures to compensate the effects of the lockdowns and restrictions.

Such measures rarely made up for the job losses, income reduction and erosion of social capital caused by closing economies. They also rarely reached some of the groups most affected – including those in the urban informal economy, poor migrants and poor women.

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“We will die in poverty before dying by COVID”: Young adults and multilayered crises in Afghanistan

Afghanistan experienced an extraordinary situation in 2021 that presents a complex example of how an intensified level of conflict and the global COVID-19 pandemic of added to an increasing prevalence of drought due to climate change has been affecting people’s livelihoods from different angles. In pre-August 2021, the country experienced record-level violence across the provinces. This was followed by the gradual fall of districts, provinces and finally the capital Kabul into the hands of the current de facto authorities, the Taliban.

Meanwhile, like any other part of the world, Afghanistan also experienced the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, which hindered people’s access to jobs, health care and different sources of revenue. Alongside this, the second-worst drought in 4 years (IFRC, 2021) has widely affected the livelihoods of the majority of people who rely on agriculture and livestock as the sole source of income.

There has been limited research into how these situations have combined to affect livelihoods and wellbeing in Afghanistan. This article attempts to advance understanding of this issue and promote research that investigates overlapped crises.

Read the full synthesis paper here.

Tanzania Covid-19 Poverty Monitor: Urban and peri-urban areas

Tanzania had its first and most serious wave of Covid-19 from March to June 2020, and adopted the policy responses of partial lockdown, school and international border closures, and banned mass gatherings except religious ones which could be attended with social distancing. In June 2020 some of the strict measures like closing bars, hotels, schools, social events and other businesses were relaxed with some precautions while hygiene and sanitation practices remained in place. The then President of Tanzania, John Pombe Magufuli, instructed to stop publishing data on Covid-19 cases and deaths in late April 2020 for several reasons. First, he was sceptical about the corona testing kits, the process and the integrity of the laboratory technicians. Second, giving data to the citizens was of no help but created fear and panic. He declared that people should pray and rely on God and on traditional medicines while doubting Covid-19 tests. The second and third waves of the pandemic occurred from November 2020 to March 2021 and from June 2021 to October 2021 respectively. The fourth wave occurred from November 2021. President John Pombe Magufuli passed away on 17th March 2021. After his death his successor, President Samia Suluhu Hassan, resumed the publication of Covid-19 cases and deaths and committed Tanzania to a vaccination programme.

She also opened up for external financial assistance to support government’s efforts in overcoming the Covid-19 pandemic in the country. While lockdown was short lived and partial, the fears induced by the pandemic lived on in people’s cautious healthcare practices through to the end of the second wave of Covid-19 (November 2020 to March 2021). The healthcare practices included wearing a face mask, washing hands with soap and running water and avoiding handshakes. And some of the effects of the lockdown, healthcare practices changes resulting from the pandemic, and global economic pandemic related trends have lived on till the present. The third and fourth waves of the pandemic occurred from June 2021 to October 2021 and from November 2021 to the time of the research on which this bulletin is based (March 2022) respectively.

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Covid-19 monitoring in rural Tanzania: The pandemic exacerbated pre-existing factors negatively affecting wellbeing

Tanzania avoided a recession due to Covid-19, mainly because it had little stringency in its Covid-19 policy responses. However, the country suffered a decline in real GDP growth rate, and poverty incidence declined marginally between 2020 and 2021. This Bulletin is based on a study which was conducted to disaggregate understanding of who has been affected among the poor and vulnerable, investigate the intersecting disadvantages which may have made it harder for some households and individuals to remain resilient while others were impoverished, and contextualise Covid-19 impacts within a broader examination of the multiple causes of poverty dynamics before and during the pandemic.

The study was conducted in Kongwa and Kilolo Districts, Tanzania, through 48 interviews, which included 27 Life History Interviews (LHIs), 12 Focus Group Discussions (FGDs), and nine Key Informant Interviews (KIIs). It was found that Covid-19 exacerbated pre-existing factors which were negatively impacting interviewees’ incomes but that it did not have adverse economic effects in some areas such as in Rural Kongwa District.

The poor were most affected by an inability to meet costs to practice preventative measures against the pandemic and subsequent treatment if they succumbed to it, and lower earnings due to missed casual labour work. The non-poor were also affected by higher costs incurred on preventive measures against the pandemic and getting treatment if they succumbed to it, and also by a decline in customers for their businesses, and rises in costs of inputs while the prices of products and other goods they traded declined. The main factors for wellbeing improvement before the pandemic were a diversification of crops planted, the acquisition of more land for agriculture, agricultural mechanisation, and doing non-farm businesses besides farm activities. The main factors for wellbeing improvement during the pandemic were avoiding the high costs on Covid-19 infection prevention and treatment, increases in customers after Covid-19 diminished, and getting a loan and using it successfully on income-generating activities. A big policy implication of the findings is that measures to prevent impoverishment are generally very inadequate.

In order to prevent impoverishment and keep poverty declining, even in the face of pandemics like Covid-19, it is recommended that Tanzania needs to target more chronically poor and vulnerable people by strengthening measures against destitution (movement into Wellbeing Level, WB 1); take proper measures for non-pandemic factors which impede poverty reduction, even when there is no pandemic, such as climatic factors, qualities and quantities of agricultural inputs and technologies, agricultural marketing and selling, and taxation on various businesses; and improve social services including education and health.

Authors: Lucia da Corta, Kim Abel Kayunze, Judith Samwel Kahamba, Constantine George Simba, Andrew Shepherd, and Halima Omari Mangi

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Welfare of Young Adults amid COVID-19, Conflict, and Disasters: Evidence from Afghanistan

Afghanistan has experienced decades of conflict-related insecurity and disasters, a situation that has been exacerbated by the onset of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19). This paper employs the Income, Expenditure, and Labour Force Survey (IE&LFS) 2019-20 to quantitatively analyse poverty and welfare loss in Afghanistan. This analysis hence covers the period before August 2021, offering an important baseline to examine deteriorating situations in subsequent years. It finds that rates of poverty and welfare loss increased during the onset of the pandemic, especially among poor households, potentially reflecting new impoverishment as well as destitution processes. Though these rates were comparable across age groups, in absolute terms, they represent approximately 4.7 million young adults living in poverty in 2019-20. Youth-headed households were disadvantaged in terms of a lower asset base. Though they had more years of schooling, and higher rates of salaried employment and migration that both helped protect against poverty, during COVID-19 they were more likely to record a temporary layoff, reflecting the precariousness of youth employment.

Disasters, insecurity, and a range of negative shocks and stressors alongside COVID-19 contributed to welfare loss, and, in some situations, were amplified during the pandemic. Many households reduced expenditures and the quality or quantity of food in response to these shocks, particularly during COVID-19. Food insecurity was a related consequence, heightened during the pandemic, especially among youth-headed households. Other responses common during COVID-19 included an increase in work-related strategies, potentially substituting a decline in social capital within the community. Though the rate of economic activities among women in general was strikingly low, there was a slight increase in employment during COVID-19 among women in poor households, and among women in households experiencing disasters or in insecure areas amid COVID-19. This may point to a potential narrowing of the gender differential in employment in crisis contexts, though this itself is a sign of distress where women in poverty may have no recourse but to engage in precarious work and uphold an increased work burden to meet household needs in times of distress.

Author: Vidya Diwakar

Paper can be downloaded here

Literature Review: Poverty Dynamics and Drivers in Zambia (1964-2019)

The Zambian Chronic poverty study, for which this literature review has been conducted, investigates and interrogates chronic poverty dynamics in Zambia. Although chronic poverty has existed for a long time, no specific study of this magnitude and scope has been conducted to provide a comprehensive understanding of chronic poverty dynamics in the country. The study has two objectives as follows:

• The study seeks to establish a dynamic understanding of the chronically poor in the post-2010 period in Zambia, to draw conclusions about who is being left behind, why and what can be done about it.

• The second objective is to establish a qualitative baseline for future monitoring work, similar to the WIDE project in Ethiopia.

The key research questions include:

• Why has extreme poverty (and hunger) remained at such a high level and so widespread especially in rural areas, despite economic growth, political stability, and a reasonable human development record?

• To what extent is this accounted for by chronic poverty or by mobility around the poverty line or different combinations of these in different places?

• What are the main sources of vulnerability, and how do these combine to impoverish or allow only temporary escapes from poverty where this is the case?

• Why are women headed households typically poorer than men-headed households? And what is the contribution of gender and other social relationships to sustained escapes/chronic poverty/impoverishment?

• Urban poverty is held to have declined faster than rural. Why is this? Is urban poverty and wellbeing correctly estimated? What results do alternative measures of urban poverty give?

• How are policies and major programmes contributing to poverty dynamics?

This literature demonstrates that, despite a favourable economy at Independence and some years afterwards, Zambia’s poverty levels have ranked among the highest in the world. Over the past five decades, Zambia has undergone several somewhat distinct policy regimes, each with varied implications on poverty. This review is divided into two sections. The first section analyses the performance of the Zambian economy over five decades, from 1964 to 2016, to reflect on policies and strategies that drove, sustained and/or reduced poverty levels and to place Zambia’s economic growth, structural changes and declines in a historical and socio-economic policy perspectives. The second section provides a conceptual and methodological overview, a detailed analysis of the historical and present poverty conditions and trends including ongoing and future poverty reduction strategies and interventions.

Authors: Phillimon Ndubani, Bwalya Chiti, Tamara Billima, Marja Hineflaar, Virginia Bond

Read the full paper here

A Qualitative Understanding of Poverty Dynamics in Zambia

This qualitative study, carried out from 2019 to 2020, describes poverty trajectories in Zambia, with a strong focus on the post-2010 period and on sustainable escape from poverty. There is limited qualitative research in Zambia on assessment of poverty dynamics that encompasses both drivers that support sustainable escapes from poverty and drivers of poverty descent. The importance of understanding these poverty dynamics, their geographical distribution and trends over time, as well as how they respond to policies and programmes, cannot be overemphasized. 

Under the leadership of Chronic Poverty Advisory Network (CPAN), and with funding from DFID, a research partnership between Zambart, LSHTM (UK), INESOR and CPAN conducted this qualitative component that was part of a broader study of Zambia Poverty Dynamics. The other broader study components included the analysis of two sets of survey data, namely the Rural Agricultural Livelihoods panel survey 2012-2015-2019 and the Living Conditions and Monitoring Survey 2010 & 2015. This was carried out by IAPRI (RALS) and INESOR (INESOR) respectively. Two other components provided modelling forecasting of poverty up to 2060, led by the University of Denver, and a political economy analysis, led by SAIPAR.  The mixed methods findings across all components are presented in a national report (see Shepherd and Bond et al., 2021). This report focuses on the qualitative component.

Authors: Virginia Bond, Joseph Simbaya, Chiti Bwalya, Lucia da Corta, Arthur M Moonga, Monde Mwamba, Lwiindi Gwanu, Marta Eichsteller, Phillimon Ndubani

Read the full report here

Poverty Dynamics in Zambia

Zambia remains a high-poverty country despite having attained middle-income status in 2011. According to projections, the country’s high levels of poverty will persist through to the middle of this century unless significant new policies and programmes can be developed. This report outlines the findings of a quantitative and qualitative analysis of poverty dynamics – defined as being stuck in poverty, escaping poverty either temporarily or in a sustained way, or becoming poor – and draws out policy implications.

Structural financial distress is manifested in the high levels of severe/food poverty, chronic poverty and impoverishment in rural areas witnessed by this study, which are strongly linked to environmental sustainability issues (deteriorating fish stocks, soil fertility, drought and floods) and disaster risk. There are many further effects: inability to cope with health shocks over time, early marriage, alcoholism, divorce, and a high number of chronically poor women-headed households. Panel data reveals relatively less poverty in urban areas compared to rural areas, but high levels of inequality within urban areas. Those in poorer urban townships endure high rents and the threat of eviction, precarious labour incomes and exploitation marked by long periods of unemployment. Inflation in the costs of living, together with the real costs of educating children, are not met by rising employment and incomes.

Sustained escapes are all too rare – where they occur, they are characterised by diversification within farming or into nonfarm enterprises, and by transitions from rural to urban residence. However, rural-urban migration as a pathway out of poverty is limited in Zambia compared to many other countries, indicating a need to spread the ‘inclusive urban development’ now being pioneered in Lusaka to other cities and towns across the country, in the hope that urban areas become more migrant-friendly. Impoverishment and temporary escapes from poverty are much more common in rural areas. A much greater emphasis in policy development is needed to prevent people falling (back) into poverty as well as to tackle the widespread rural chronic poverty. In urban areas, there is an urgent need to invest in the country’s power generation and electricity distribution system to avoid a repetition of the employment crisis generated by the 2019 drought and persistent load shedding. Load shedding has significant impacts on people’s livelihoods, especially traders, saloon and barber shop owners, welders and other users of electricity. Increasing the rate of rural electrification and access for poorer households will also help build resilience through investments in irrigation and nonfarm enterprises.

The overall context is one of macroeconomic vulnerability and constraints on public action. Zambia is a Least Developed Country (LDC) that is mineral-dependent, debt-distressed and with a revenue deficit. It also suffers from long-term urban–rural, inter-provincial and gender inequalities and highly contested politics characterised by weak policy development and implementation. With the advent of a new government, policies now need to tackle the causes of adverse poverty dynamics, and to introduce innovations into the policy framework – this research has suggestions on what they should be. Implementation problems are widespread, with examples including regularly delayed subsidised fertiliser distribution (despite early requests for down payments from beneficiaries), inadequate financing of social cash transfers and associated corruption scandals, and inadequate financing of the Food Security Pack programme. These contextual factors significantly constrain the effectiveness of state action on poverty reduction.

Zambians have faced a recent period of sharp shocks to the incomes of the poor (from 2017 to end-2019) as well as a decade (2011 to present) of systemic stressors driving a slower decline in income, savings and assets which increased the vulnerability to the recent shocks faced by households and those brought on by COVID-19 in 2020–21. The management of the 2019 drought is being evaluated, but the official response appears to have left much to be desired. Coupled with concerns about COVID-19 donor funding, questions are being raised about the politicisation of relief.

In this context, it is remarkable that some people can still escape poverty and remain out of it. The qualitative research revealed how these ‘sustained escapers’ demonstrate the benefits of education (including educated children), a stable marriage, women’s empowerment, diverse livelihoods, hard work, compassionate employer-labour relationships and careful management of health, partners, recreational pursuits and assets. In the medium term, getting agriculture policy right, combined with supporting diversification and inclusive urbanisation and supported by significant increases in public expenditure on health and education, will go a long way towards supporting those escapes and supporting more people to escape in the first place. With its 8th National Development Plan in process and a new government, Zambia has a major opportunity to tackle its persistently high poverty levels.

Authors: Andrew Shepherd, Virginia Bond, Chiti Bwalya, Richard Bwalya, Antony Chapoto, Lucia da Corta, Vidya Diwakar, Marta Eichsteller, Lwiindi Gwanu, Mary Lubungu, Monde Mwamba, Phillimon Ndubani, Joseph Simbaya and Mitelo Subakanya

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The role of agriculture in poverty escapes in Kenya – Developing a capabilities approach in the context of climate change

Rural poverty poses a significant developmental challenge in Kenya. Using a panel survey in rural Kenya and qualitative material from focus groups and life history interviews from the regions of Makueni and Vihiga, we investigate the changing role of how agriculture and farming practices have contributed to sustained escapes from poverty since 2000. In this study we analyse environmental, social and personal structures that facilitate conversion of agricultural strategies that enable poverty escapes in the context of climate change. Our study identifies that agriculture still forms an essential aspect of Kenyan households’ economic and social wellbeing. However, the study results indicate that links between accumulation of assets and poverty escapes are ambiguous, poor households find it problematic to convert agricultural strategies into a profit, and climate change shocks further exasperate these difficulties. We argue that constraints in conversion structures, such as limited infrastructure, and in conversion processes such as ongoing difficulties in land procurement and inheritance, unsustainable farming practices and continued lack of knowledge on climate-smart agriculture affect not only poverty escapes, but also the ability to adapt to and mitigate against environmental shocks. Development of conversion processes to improve existing conversion structures should be at the core of public interventions that seek to sustainably reduce poverty amidst climate change in rural Kenya.

This publication was authored by CPAN partners Marta Eichsteller, Tim Njagi, and Elvin Nyukuric, and was published in World Development journal.

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