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Food security in Southern Africa: Causes and responses from across the region
18 March 2003, Human Sciences Research Council, Pretoria
A meeting hosted by the Southern African Regional Poverty Network in collaboration with CARE International and the French Institute of South Africa
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[Background and purpose]
[Programme]
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[Papers]
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Introduction
After four decades of conflict, the cease-fire signed in April 2002 offers Angola the best opportunity in generations to forge a more equitable growth path, and to reformulate a governing apparatus that serves the needs of the population. Given that the balance of power has definitively shifted to the government, the peace is likely to be durable. Unlike other countries in southern Africa however, Angola is not facing an unusual drought year. The Angolan emergency is essentially linked to war and governance. The war destroyed infrastructure throughout the country, forced millions to move, and razed communities through scorched-earth tactics. Human rights were violated, women raped, men abducted. Millions went hungry and died. Entire generations have been pressed-ganged into warfare, killed, or simply disappeared.
Almost 50% of agricultural households in rural Angola are now female headed, with almost no remittance streams. HIV infection, at 5.5%, is comparatively lower than the regional average. With little being done, HIV/AIDS impact is likely to follow patterns now seen in other countries in the region. Urban population growth has been extremely high in Angola in the last 40 years, even by African standards. Urban areas accounted for 15% of the population in 1970, versus an estimated 50% in the 1990s. Luanda alone accounts for over 3 million, or almost 25% of the national population. To a limited extent, clientelist redistribution has benefited a wider layer of the urban population through subsidies for fuel, water, and electricity. During periods of hyperinflation state resources financed imports of food and other commodities at a subsidized exchange rate. But these benefits have been outweighed by a decline in real purchasing power and the decay of social service delivery (Hodges 2001).
Despite these hardships, the people of Angola have shown impressive perseverance and remain hopeful for the future. In the second half of 2002, half of the nearly two million people who had taken refuge in IDP camps returned to their home areas, and seek to revive their livelihoods. But they return to areas that hardly fulfill the basic conditions for a decent life. Most areas have virtually no services, including water, health facilities, schools, or civilian administration. Farmers possess few productive resources, including the minimum inputs such as seeds, hand tools and ploughs, or sufficient labor to recuperate land that has lain fallow for years. Due to the pervasive prevalence of land mines, they undertake agriculture literally at the risk of life or limb. The immediate challenges of post war resettlement and rehabilitation center on humanitarian assistance in the short term to ensure adequate access to the most basic assets to reestablish food production, the rehabilitation of roads to facilitate the growth of markets and entry into trade, the construction and staffing of basic social infrastructure, and training of health and education workers.
The oil sector provided 80% of government revenue during the 1990s. Backward and forward linkages to rest of economy are limited, except through the redistributive mechanisms of government revenue and expenditure. However, the government has never had a long term economic and social development strategy which identified and implemented prioritized public expenditure targets, and which could therefore assist in redressing the distortions caused by the structure of oil revenues. In the longer term, reducing high inequality through more equitable and responsive public spending is crucial to avoiding instability in the future. The lack of transparency in public resource management, and the weakness of civil society and mechanisms to link citizens with the government, has made accountability even more difficult to achieve.
Comparatively little social science research has been carried out in the post-independence period, nor was it a priority during the colonial period. More recent scholarly work has focused on the political and military aspects of the war, and the oil and diamond economies (e.g. Aguilar 2001; Cilliers and Dietrich 2000; Hodges 2001; Le Billon 2001). The international community has largely focused on emergency aid, rapid interventions, and identifying gaps in basic needs. Consequently, understanding of social structures and livelihood trends is more cursory than in most countries. As a result of the war and under investment in basic statistical capacity, household data is also very limited and there is no national level poverty data.
With these constraints in mind, this paper first presents a situational analysis of the immediate challenges facing Angola. It then turns to a discussion of trends in the rural areas of the Central Plateau, historically seen as Angola's breadbasket, and follows this with a section on urban livelihoods, where approximately half the population now lives. The lack of both qualitative and quantitative data over time means that the paper does not seek to definitively identify and establish livelihood trends, but rather to raise questions and facilitate future analysis. The final section takes up the policy implications, and argues that reconstruction must be a dialogue that links the center with the grassroots, accompanied by greater governmental transparency. In this context, chronic weaknesses in local government structures is a major constraint to community led development.
Perhaps the biggest challenge is understanding and responding to the reality that post-conflict recovery is not, and cannot be, a simple reconstruction of the past. In the aftermath of conflict many elements may be reconfigured: livelihood strategies, gender relationships, the varying legitimacy accorded to political authorities, social networks and support structures, individual aspirations, and perceptions of valued work. The reconstruction program in Angola must do what they have often failed to do elsewhere. It must look for new solutions, address fundamental issues of what direction development should take, and incorporate institutional reformulation and strengthening as a central organizing principle.
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