The UK Government’s work on achieving SDG2: Zero Hunger - written evidence
Ivica Petrikova, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations
Royal Holloway, University of London
Summary
This short document highlights that 1. global food security situation has been deteriorating over the past five years, 2. UK development aid increased significantly from early 2000s but experienced a rapid downturn after 2019 both generally and specifically in sectors linked to food and nutrition security and in highly food insecure countries, and 3. development aid might have some positive effects on food and nutrition security but UK aid food and nutrition-related programmes and projects have been plagued with problems of lack of ownership and sustainability and are generally unable to bring about systemic or structural change to the global food and nutrition systems.
Biography
Ivica Petrikova is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations, Royal Holloway University of London and has conducted research on food and nutrition security for many years. In her PhD, concluded in 2016, she investigated the effects of development assistance in its different forms on recipient countries’ food security, with the results published as Global Food Security and Development Aid by Routledge. Her research afterwards has focused on examining and comparing food-security governance mechanisms in lower-income countries, particularly Ethiopia, Nigeria, India, and Kenya. Within this broad remit, she has worked as co-investigator on various food-security and nutrition research projects funded by the BBSRC, GCRF, and the Academy of Medical Sciences and published articles in high-impact academic journals (e.g., Food Security, European Journal of Development Research, Third World Quarterly, Lancet Planetary Health, Foods). She has also taught undergraduate and postgraduate modules on the politics of food and nutrition security and is currently the lead editor of the Handbook of Politics of Food Security to be published by De Gruyter in 2024.
- Introduction
According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO) 2023 report[1], 735 million people globally are estimated to be undernourished, i.e. lack access to a sufficient number of daily calories. That is 29% more than in 2017. The Covid-19 pandemic, in combination with natural disasters, conflicts, and related economic contractions, has reduced previous steady global decline in the proportion and number of undernourished people, and consequently the world is currently far off track achieving SDG2. Can development aid help in this regard?
This short document addresses the issue with specific reference to UK development aid. It starts out by looking at recent developments in UK aid provision generally. Second, it considers whether development aid has the potential to positively influence food and nutrition security in other countries. Third, it briefly examines a sample of UK aid programmes and projects focused specifically on food and nutrition security. It finishes with some concluding remarks.
- UK aid and SDG2 – general overview of UK aid
Figure 1 below displays UK aid commitments and disbursements from 1997 to 2021. The graphs clearly show that the development aid provided by the UK increased significantly over most of that time period, hitting its highest point in 2019. Driven by the Covid-19 pandemic-related contraction of the UK economy and subsequent reduction of UK aid commitment from 0.7 to 0.5% GNI, the aid volume afterwards experienced a significant fall. Interestingly, the graph also shows that particularly after 2010, much more UK aid has been disbursed (actually provided) than committed (promised ahead of time), highlighting a more spontaneous nature of more recent UK aid flows.
Figure 1. UK aid commitments and disbursements 1997 to 2022 (2021 USD mill)
Source: OECD Query Wizard for International Development Statistics
The recent cuts to UK aid generally have also significantly affected aid provided specifically to sectors closely linked with food and nutrition security in aid-recipient countries. Graphs in Figures 2 through 5 below show that after 2019, all four types of aid explored experienced a dramatic reduction. From sector divisions, aid to agriculture can be connected with food security probably most directly – as often it aims to improve productivity amongst small-holder subsistence farmers, who frequently consume home-produced food or rely on it as a key means of livelihood. UK aid to agriculture was relatively low in early 2000s, increased significantly following the 2008 food price crisis, and declined steeply after 2019 (Figure 2). Humanitarian assistance, which is usually provided in emergencies following disasters or conflicts and aims to sustain people in the immediate term, followed a similar trajectory – with a significant increase after 2012 and a significant fall after 2019 (Figure 4). The same happened essentially with the UK’s support to the World Food Programme (Figure 5), which is not surprising given that it is one of the world’s largest humanitarian organisations. UK aid to development food assistance has been more volatile but it also declined after 2019 (Figure 4).
Figure 2-5. UK aid contribution to agriculture, development food assistance, humanitarian aid, and the World Food Programme
Source: OECD Creditor Reporting System, World Food Programme
This reduction in UK aid provision did not affect only food-secure or mildly food-insecure countries. Table 1 below looks at UK aid flows to 14 countries at high risk of famine, most of them affected by conflict, and shows that in 12 out of 14 countries, UK aid in 2021 was lower than in 2019. In 6 out of 14 countries (Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Syria, and Yemen), the aid provision in 2021 was less than half the amount received from the UK in 2019.
Table 1. UK development aid provision to countries at high risk of famine in 2019 and 2021
Source: OECD QWIDS, aid amount in 2021 USD
- Can development aid positively influence recipient countries’ food and nutrition security?
But do these aid cuts to UK aid make any difference? Can development aid positively influence recipient countries’ food and nutrition security? Most studies on aid effectiveness, particularly the macro-level ones, examine the effects of aid on economic growth or poverty levels. However, my doctoral research, conducted from 2010 to 2015 at University College London, assessed specifically the effects of development assistance on recipient countries’ food and nutrition security, the basis of SDG2. The analysis that I carried out was a multi-level mixed-methods one, starting with a quantitative analysis of cross-country aid flows, moving to a quantitative and qualitative case studies of Peru, Ethiopia, India, and Vietnam, and finishing with an in-depth analysis of several aid projects in Uttar Pradesh, India. My overall conclusion was that development aid in general had a small but often significant positive effect on recipient countries’ – and household recipients’ - food security, which was generally higher in the presence of better national as well as local governance. Disaggregation of aid into different types – based on who provides it, how, and where - suggested that some types of aid were more beneficial to food security than other types, particularly aid to social sectors as opposed to aid to economic sectors. Further, my analysis showed that some types of aid including concessional loans and budget support had any positive effect only in countries with a higher quality of governance. Findings from the thesis were published in a book[2] by Routledge and in several peer-reviewed journal articles[3].
As I argued in my PhD thesis, any development aid disbursed to a country could theoretically be expected to bolster the country’s food security, as ensuring that people have enough to eat is one of the most important functions of a state. However, there are clearly some aid programmes and projects that are linked more directly with food security than others. In order to be able to shed more light on the effects of UK Government’s work regarding SDG2, I conducted a quick review of UK aid programmes and projects linked in some way with food and nutrition security. On the devtracker.fcdo.gov.uk website, I found 1115 programmes and projects, both ongoing and closed, related to the promotion of better food and nutrition security. Out of those, I briefly examined 47 programmes and projects, focusing particularly on those with large budgets. Table 1 in the Appendix lists their names, start and end dates, budgets, and brief descriptions. In the case of completed projects, I usually read their project/programme completion review (PCR) and/or an impact analysis if one had been carried out. In the case of ongoing projects, I read the last annual review (AR).
- UK aid programmes and projects related to food and nutrition security
The projects reviewed each took a different approach to their efforts to improve food and nutrition security in the aid-receiving countries, but they can be divided into several broad types. Many projects were of a humanitarian character, engaging in direct food or cash transfers. Some attempted to bridge the humanitarian activities into more development ones, for example in ‘Building Resilience Through Asset Creation and Enhancement II – South Sudan’ beneficiaries earned cash or food through the construction of community assets like irrigation ponds. Other projects focused on enhancing agricultural productivity of often small-holder farmers; these frequently included also focus on biofortified or otherwise enhanced seeds (here DFID often collaborated with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation). Yet other projects aimed to enhance food exports from lower-income countries, whether to Western ones or to other LMICs, or focused on social welfare transfers as a means of bolstering food security. Finally, many other projects focused predominantly on research, into higher-yielding or more resilient crops or different aspects of the food system.
With my co-investigator Dr Melita Lazell, we previously conducted an in-depth evaluation of 144 security-linked DFID/FCDO projects in Kenya, Nigeria, and South Sudan[4], assessing them according to the OECD evaluation criteria of relevance, coherence, effectiveness, impact, and sustainability. We concluded that whilst most of the development projects were relevant and many achieved their intended outputs, those outputs often failed to translate into intended outcomes. Common reasons for this failure included incorrect assumptions at the project design stage, over-optimism about the projects’ transformative potential, and deficient ‘ownership’. Since the programmes and projects often struggled to achieve their outcomes, their impact and sustainability were also generally problematic. My brief overview of the 47 food and nutrition-related programmes and projects revealed that many of them suffered from some of the same issues as the security-linked ones.
Most of the programmes and projects seemed highly relevant, in that they were addressing issues of high importance to the countries’ and global development (i.e., food and nutrition security). There seemed to be more problems with coherence, i.e. the OECD criterion that examines how well the interventions fit with other, existing ones. In several instances, the project documentation suggested that DFID/FCDO’s coordination with other donors could have been better (e.g., Yemen Food Security Safety Net Programme, Tanzania Productive Social Safety Net, Zimbabwe Livelihoods and Food Security Programme, Ethiopia Drought Response Programme). It is well known that aid effectiveness is often undermined by a lack of donor coordination but since the Paris Declaration (2005) and the Accra Agenda for Action (2008) there has been less clear international effort by donors to address it. In terms of the projects’ and programmes’ efficiency – value for money, it would be difficult to judge that when not having access to a sufficiently detailed break-down of the programmes’ and projects’ costs, but one project does stand out here. The Global Nutrition Project, in place from 2019 to 2024, spent in 2021/2022 £24.8 million. For that year, the intended budget was £2.2 million. Not much information is available about the project on devtracker.fcdo.gov.uk, but it appears that the main focus of the project was producing the annual Global Nutrition Report.
Looking to the programmes’ and projects’ effectiveness, i.e. the extent to which interventions have achieved their objectives, many were also undermined in their achievements by the lack of ‘ownership’. There is broad agreement in development policy that development initiatives will not work well unless they are ‘locally owned’, but it is rarely specifically acknowledged that the ‘locals’ are not a homogeneous group and might have different interests. The project documentation in ‘Livelihoods and Food Security Trust Fund for Burma’ contends that local voices should have been given more space in the project design. 2023 annual review for ‘Yemen Food Security Safety Net Programme’ admits that the discourse of the importance of localisation has not translated into reality in the project, with only a national NGO at the top of the consortium and a lack of involvement of more grassroot organisations. It is of course true that in conflict-affected contexts like Yemen, Myanmar but also South Sudan, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and many others trying to design interventions with local ownership might be particularly fraught with difficulties. But even food-security projects in Rwanda, a country with better functioning institutions than most other low-income countries, have been affected by a lack of ownership of the development interventions. In both ‘Rwanda Programme of Support to Agriculture’ and ‘Future of Agriculture in Rwanda’ the project documentation highlighted that local government institutions were sidelined during the projects by project implementers. This not only undermined the ownership of the interventions but also the sustainability of any of the projects’ achievements.
Sustainability or lack thereof were quite commonly underlined as at risk in the various project documents that I have gone through. In ‘Zimbabwe Livelihoods and Food Security Programme’, it was acknowledged that the programme’s interventions were too intensive for existing government systems to continue with after the programme’s completion. Similarly, in ‘Supporting Lebanese Host Communities’, the project review recognised that infrastructure built by the project would likely fall into disrepair after the project’s end due to lack of routine maintenance and repairs because of insufficient domestic budget. In ‘Supporting Nutrition in Pakistan’, the project tried to encourage wheat flour fortification across the country but because requisite laws were not passed during the project, the impact evaluation saw as a distinct possibility that the fortification would also be abandoned after the project’s funding ran out. Finally, in Tanzania’s ‘Productive Social Safety Net’, even though the government originally promised to take over the financing of the project, as the time to do so approached, they became reluctant to do so, also because of clashing priorities.
Clearly then, many of the projects’ and programmes’ achievement might not last once the donor funding ceases or is directed to other activities. But have many of the projects and programmes attained what they have set out to? The answer there is also often unfortunately negative. Many of the project documents implicitly or explicitly concede that even if the intended outputs were achieved, they have failed to translate into more systemic or structural change. For example, programme completion review for Food Retail Industry Challenge Fund argued that whilst the project achieved innovations in individual firms, these did not appear to affect the system as a whole. Pakistan’s ‘Multi-Year Humanitarian Programme’ handed out cash to beneficiaries but similarly did not have much impact on the country’s food or economic systems. Analogously, annual review for ‘Livelihoods and Food Security Trust Fund for Burma’ desired to attain systemic changes in Myanmar but acknowledged not to have achieved them. As an aside, the project reviewers also pointed out that insufficient understanding of the local Burmese context led the programme to initially express support for the government’s highly discriminatory Vacant, Fallow, and Virgin Land law amendments, which led to significant reputation damage of the programme. The programme completion review of ‘Future of agriculture in Rwanda’ pondered what the project achieved when it apparently failed to imbue any change in the way the country’s institutions worked. Further questions about impact abound regarding the many research projects funded with development aid, where it is not always clear what the follow-up from new research papers or data products might be. Finally, doubts were also expressed regarding the potential impact of UK aid following the aid cuts, both regarding their effect on beneficiaries but also on the UK’s image and soft power amongst its aid recipients.
- Conclusion
The brief review above has suggested that 1. global food security situation has been deteriorating over the past five years, 2. UK development aid increased significantly from early 2000s but experienced a rapid downturn after 2019 both generally and specifically in sectors linked to food and nutrition security and in highly food insecure countries, and 3. development aid might have some positive effects on food and nutrition security but aid programmes and projects are plagued with problems of lack of ownership and sustainability and are generally unable to bring about systemic or structural change. That is not to say that aid should be abandoned. It is undoubtable that humanitarian aid saves millions of lives and ameliorates people’s suffering. Even if project/programme funding ceases, positive effects of some interventions remain. A recent impact evaluation[5] of the maternal and child cash transfer in Myanmar, partially funded by DFID but stopped prior to the pandemic, suggested that the positive effects the programme had on maternal and child nutrition were apparent even several years after the cash transfers had ceased. However, hopes that the development aid system, at least in its current form, could bring about structural changes in global food and nutrition security are likely unrealistic.
There are other ways through which food and nutrition security in LMICs could be strengthened more effectively. One would be a reform of global trading rules. It is clear that a lot of domestic agricultural production and processing in LMICs has been decimated over recent decades through rapid trade liberalisation in an uneven field where high-income countries have very high agricultural subsidies in place, which have priced out LMIC’s domestically produced foods[6]. Whilst the UK is perhaps less guilty of this than many other European or Western countries, if genuinely interested in strengthening global food and nutrition security, it should press for the resumption of WTO talks on agricultural trade and an overhaul of the global trade structure. Another one would be addressing the increasingly concentrated control of the global food systems by only a few multinational companies. For example, just four companies control half of the world’s commercial seed production, 62% of the world’s pesticide market,[7] and 70% of global trade in grains and oilseeds[8]. This has increased the fragility of the global food systems, making a global food availability crisis more likely, but has also contributed to rapid ‘nutrition transition’ where most LMICs now struggle not only with high levels of undernutrition in children but also increasing levels of overweight, obesity, and diet-related non-communicable diseases. Reducing the current corporate power over food production and distribution would be hence desirable but is likely to face strong opposition from the corporations, whose power to influence policy decisions is very high, precisely because of the high corporate concentration in the global food system.
Appendix
List of programmes and projects reviewed
Name | Budget | Start date | End date | Brief description |
Zimbabwe Livelihoods and Food Security Programme | £70 mill | 2013 | 2021 | To improve the food and nutrition security of 350,000 small holder farmers in 11 rural districts of Zimbabwe by raising farm productivity through training of farmers and introducing improved agricultural practices, linking the farmer groups to input and output markets, facilitating access to rural finance and promoting production and consumption of nutritious foods including bio-fortified and fortification of maize. |
Food Retail Industry Challenge Fund (FRICH) | £5.34 mill | 2008 | 2014 | To reduce poverty through improved incomes for rural poor in Africa, by maintaining and increasing market access for food exports produced by African small scale farmers and employment generating export industries. |
Promoting Inclusive Markets (PIMS) in Somalia | £14 mill | 2015 | 2018 | Project Purpose is to expand private sector investment by creating more income for firms in livestock, fisheries, poultry, food crop, construction and light manufacturing to create 9000 long term jobs (including 4400 long term jobs for women) and 500,000 employment days for the poor, women, and youth in the three regions of South Central, Somaliland and Puntland. |
Supporting Nutrition in Pakistan (SNIP) | £34 mill | 2014 | 2022 | To improve nutritional status for people in Pakistan, decreasing Undernutrition through nutrition-specific and nutrition sensitive interventions benefiting particularly poorest women, girls and under 5 children. |
Global Nutrition Report | £32 mill | 2018 | 2023 |
|
Palestinian Market Development Programme to Strengthen the Private Sector in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPTs) | £16 mill | 2013 | 2018 | The main objective of the project is to improve the competitiveness of the Palestinian Private Sector and through a programme of technical assistance and matching grants. The programme comprises 3 key outputs: -improve Private Sector skills and innovation -address market system failures in specific sectors -strenghtening trade and investment linkages with international markets |
Emergency Food Assistance to the Food Insecure and Conflict-Affected People in Yemen (2015-16) | £19 mill | 2015 | 2017 | To provide emergency food assistance (in-kind, cash and voucher) to at least 580,000 food insecure and conflict affected people in Yemen until March 2016, delivered through the World Food Programme. |
Africa Food Trade and Resilience programme | £33 mill | 2018 | 2025 | The programme will stimulate an increase in regional food trade in sub Saharan Africa (SSA), contributing to satisfying a growing food demand and to addressing food shortages through regional food production, processing and trade, and generating more rural jobs, climate resilience and income for farmers. The programme will: (i) work with companies that source, process, and trade food in the region, to maximise investment, coordination and benefits to smallholder farmers and (ii) contribute to improve the transparency and predictability of government policies to unlock regional food trade. By 2023, we expect the programme will increase income for 1.8 million farming families. DFID funding will de-risk and stimulate over £100 million in private sector investment aimed at enhancing smallholder farmers’ productivity and resilience. |
Affordability of Food & Finance in Yemen | £17 mill | 2022 | 2025 | Yemen’s economic crisis exacerbates humanitarian need and political instability. With 90% of Yemen’s food imported, prices are rising – a major factor behind famine risk. Meanwhile, rising public discontent over currency instability and food prices could trigger Government collapse, undermining the peace process. The programme will provide funding to preserve and strengthen institutional capacity, help maintain access to trade finance to enable the continued flow of imports and stabilise food prices. Improved policies will help to stabilise the exchange rate and macroeconomy, reduce food price inflation and avoid further escalation of humanitarian needs. The programme will benefit populations across the country, by lowering the cost of food and increase access to hard currency. |
Strategic Partnership on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition | £35 mill | 2015 | 2025 | This programme will contribute to improved food and nutrition security through effective agriculture interventions and food systems that make nutritious food accessible , acceptable and available to all, particularly woman and young children in poor households.. It includes large-scale studies in Africa and South Asia on the impact and cost effectiveness of agricultural interventions on nutrition and health outcomes, and interdisciplinary studies on the drivers of food choices which influence healthy, safe and nutritious diets. |
Livelihoods and Food Security Trust Fund for Burma (NUTSEM) | £200 mill | 2010 | 2021 | To improve the incomes and nutrition status of over 1.63 million poor people in Burma by promoting resilient livelihoods and food security food security through agricultural commercialisation and climate smart agriculture, financial inclusion, business and skills development, and targeted nutrition support to mothers and children in the ‘One thousand day’ window between conception and a child’s second birthday. |
Land Investment For Transformation | £41 mill | 2013 | 2020 | The project purpose of the Land Investment for Transformation Programme (Ethiopia) is to increase land tenure security through second level land certification (SLLC) and improved rural land administration systems, maximising benefits to small holder farmers through to a Making Markets Work for the Poor (M4P) component, in the four states of Oromia, Amhara, Tigray and the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region (SNNPR). At the national level the project will work with the Government to ensure the transparency of land allocation, commercial land investment procedures and other policies and procedures are consistent with international good practice and human rights commitments. The LIFT Programme consists of three main pillars that includes: 1. Second Level Land Certification 2. M4P Interventions 3. Cross Cutting Policy Issues |
Food Security Safety Net Programme | £72 mill | 2022 | 2026 | This activity (Social Protection Support to the Social Fund for Development (SFD)) is a component of Food Security Safety Net Programme reported by FCDO, with a funding type of 'Not for profit organisation' and a budget of £75,000,000. This component benefits Yemen, and works in the following sector(s): Social Protection. , with the following implementing partners: Social Fund for Development (SFD). The start date is 01-01-2022 and the end date is 31-12-2026. |
Afghanistan Food Security and Livelihoods Programme | £187 mill | 2023 | 2026 | This three-year programme will provide targeted assistance to millions of the most vulnerable people in Afghanistan. Programming will include emergency food, water sanitation and hygiene (WASH), nutrition, and health assistance, as well as emergency support to, and early recovery of, agriculture and livelihoods. |
Saving lives of conflict affected communities through improved food security | £59 mill | 2017 | 2022 | This is a 3 years program financed by Department For International Development DFID. It is aimed at addressing the needs in Emergency Food Security and Vulnerable Livelihoods (EFSVL) for the people affected by the conflict and protracted economic crisis through established modalities; Unconditional Cash Transfer (UCT) and Cash for Work. The intervention will be integrated and synergized with existing WaSH programmes funded by different donors to ensure that immediate needs of vulnerable people are met and the level of resilience is increased by improving household (HH) coping mechanisms against stresses and shocks. There are mainly two modalities proposed in this project: • UCT will be targeted towards the most food insecure households with a combination of community participation and oversight following criteria targeting households headed by women, children, the elderly and persons with disabilities, along with households without adults able to work. • Cash for Work (CfW) will target HH not receiving UCT and give able -bodied members who are able to work for 15 days the equivalent amount as a UCT. |
Livelihoods and Food Security Fund | £19 mill | 2021 | 2023 | To deliver immediate support to the most vulnerable in urban and rural contexts in response to the impact of Covid-19 over the last year and the February coup. It will supplement humanitarian responses in Rakhine and Kachin, supporting community and household resilience to maintain future productive capacity, and bolster community nutrition and food security. United Kingdom support will meet Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office Myanmar’s new strategic priorities to support the most vulnerable, reaching 1 million more poor and excluded people. In addition, the programme will provide direct support to raise the income and nutrition of displaced people, and conflict-affected people in urban contexts including migrants, and the rural poor. |
Ethiopia Drought Response Programme | £60 mill | 2016 | 2019 |
|
Food Security Safety Net Programme | £250 mill | 2022 | 2026 | As FCDO Yemen’s flagship programme it will provide immediate life-saving assistance to those most in need (including women and marginalised groups) and ensure a more sustainable response to on-going high humanitarian needs and unexpected shocks in this protracted crisis context. |
Supporting Lebanese Hosting Communities | £190 mill | 2012 | 2023 | Support to economic recovery, community security and social cohesion in Lebanese communities affected by the Syrian Crisis |
Malawi Humanitarian Preparedness and Response Programme | £80 mill | 2015 | 2019 | To prepare to meet the food and nutritional needs of over 2.8 million of Malawi’s most vulnerable and food insecure people following the recent devastating floods in the country for 2015/16 and following the early cessation of rains and other factors that have caused hunger across the country |
Securing global wheat crops for food and nutritional security - in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) | £14 mill | 2019 | 2024 | Working in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on two major co-investments in wheat crop improvement, DFID’s funding will increase the nutritional quality and disease resistance of wheat crops, building the resilience of smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, and contributing to global food security in the face of climate change, and emerging plant disease and pest threats. Securing global wheat crops through wheat breeding includes improving heat tolerance and increasing climate resilience in the crop varieties. |
Sahel Humanitarian Emergency Response Programme | £163 mill | 2018 | 2023 | To provide life-saving assistance to around six million crisis-affected and vulnerable people across five Sahelian countries, Mali, Niger, Chad, Mauritania and Burkina Faso. This support includes food and cash assistance for those suffering from food insecurity, therapeutic food and early detection of severe acute malnutrition, basic support to livelihoods through the provision of seeds and tools, animal food and animal vaccinations, improved access to safe water and hygiene, and emergency health and medicine. Research will be commissioned to build the evidence base for integrated nutrition assistance and to improve the understanding of required nutritional interventions in the Sahel. |
Sudan Humanitarian Response and Innovation Programme | £48 million | 2015 | 2018 | To respond to suffering resulting from conflict and natural disasters by providing lifesaving assistance and helping people rebuild their livelihoods. 2.7 million people will benefit from interventions (health, water and sanitation, nutrition, livelihoods, food security and protection) and the provision of shelter and non-food items. This contributes towards our MDGs/SDGs by providing humanitarian assistance and will result in a reduction in loss of life and suffering |
Programme of Support to Agriculture in Rwanda | £43 million | 2014 | 2020 | To sustainably increase the agricultural productivity of poor farmers by transforming Rwandan agriculture from a subsistence-based to a more commercial-based sector that accelerates agricultural growth. This will help address challenges that may limit agriculture productivity, reduce the rate at which poverty is falling, increase inequality and hamper improvements in food security and malnutrition. The programme will result in increased agricultural productivity, food security and incomes of poor households and contributes towards the MDG’s by helping to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger and; promoting gender equality and empowering women. |
Sahel Humanitarian Assistance and Protection Programme | £150 million | 2021 | 2023 | The SHAPP will provide assistance and protection for the most vulnerable in geographic hotspots of most acute need in the Sahel. Hotspots are found across the region where consequences of conflict, including violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, are making pre-existing food insecurity and malnutrition worse. The SHAPP will address as many basic needs as possible of the most vulnerable including child protection, support to victims or survivors of gender based violence, food, nutrition, water and sanitation. Human rights and international humanitarian law will remain at the centre of the new programme by informing and driving SHAPP design and priorities. |
Building Resilience Through Asset Creation and Enhancement II – South Sudan | £48 million | 2015 | 2023 | To reduce hunger gaps, improve long-term food security and mitigate conflict among 400,000 rural poor in five states of South Sudan. By working together beneficiaries earn food or cash in return for identifying and building community assets (such as irrigation ponds). This enables communities to develop and manage their resources against extreme climate damage and shocks. This will contribute to Sustainable Development Goals 1, 2, 13, 15 and 16 to end poverty and hunger; take action on climate; protect life on land and; promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development. |
Support to Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) | £154 mill | 2008 | 2012 | To increase the contribution of agriculture and natural resources to food security, growth, poverty reduction, and environmental sustainability by increasing the relevance and impact of international agriculture and natural resources research |
Tanzania PSSNP | £115 million | 2015 | 2022 | To support the scale up of the Productive Social Safety Net which will reach 1 million households, and these households are the poorest 15%. through the provision of conditional Cash Transfers, Green Public Works and Livelihood Enhancement. This programme will aim to improve the opportunities available to the poorest communities by reducing the depth of income poverty, improving food consumption and increasing their resilience to climate-related shocks. DFID will also support central government to develop and strengthen systems and institutions to deliver more comprehensive social protection provision that can respond to any future economic, food or climate shocks in Tanzania |
Citizen Damage Compensation Programme | £65 million | 2011 | 2014 | People affected by floods are provided with cash to spend and invest on their basic recovery needs including food, livelihoods and shelter.People affected by floods are provided with cash to spend and invest on their basic recovery needs including food, livelihoods and shelter.People affected by floods are provided with cash to spend and invest on their basic recovery needs including food, livelihoods and shelter.People affected by floods are provided with cash to spend and invest on their basic recovery needs including food, livelihoods and shelter. |
Multi-Year Humanitarian Programme in Pakistan | £120 million | 2014 | 2023 | Support for up to three million of the most vulnerable people affected by natural disaster and conflict. This will cover both immediate relief and early recovery interventions for shelter, food, non-food items, water and sanitation, livelihood and protection needs, depending on the emergency. This programme will also support developments in the United Nations and local civil society which are required for humanitarian responses to be more locally owned and effective in future, as well as effective monitoring and evaluation, targeted active research and piloting. |
Strengthening Ethiopia’s Adaptive Safety Net | £45 million | 2020 | 2022 | Ethiopia's rural safety net provides predictable cash and or food transfers to 8 million extremely poor people in chronically food insecure woredas (districts) in rural Ethiopia. Clients are selected for the program through a community-based targeting process. Households with able-bodied adult members are asked to work on community-planned public works in exchange for their transfers. These public works are activities like rehabilitate the natural resource base, build health posts and schoolrooms, construct and rehabilitate roads, and build other public infrastructure as prioritised by the community. Women are exempt from PW during pregnancy and 2 years postpartum. Labor-constrained households receive unconditional transfers (PDS) and are linked with complementary social services where possible. The safety net also provides livelihoods support in the form of skills training, business planning, savings promotion, credit facilitation, and, where appropriate, employment linkages. |
Humanitarian Assistance and Resilience in South Sudan | £770 mill | 2015 | 2024 | To help approximately three million South Sudanese by providing critical life-saving support and helping people to better cope with shocks from conflict, drought and flooding. This programme aims to save the lives of an estimated two million people who will receive at least one form of humanitarian assistance; and build the capacity of an estimated one million people to recover and cope better with shocks. Over six years this programme will provide food, shelter and access to water and health services to millions of vulnerable people, including women and children. |
North East Nigeria Transition to Development Programme | £427 mill | 2017 | 2022 | To deliver an effective response to the basic needs of vulnerable people impacted by the crisis in the North East of Nigeria. The programme will deliver humanitarian assistance in nutrition and food security; protection and Education in Emergencies; multi-sector support including health, water, shelter and livelihoods interventions; as well as enabling a more efficient response to the crisis, including strengthened government planning, budgeting and coordination; and risk management. |
HarvestPlus - Phase 2 - Delivering Nutritionally Enriched Food Crops | £39 mill | 2015 | 2019 | To have 14 million small farming households growing biofortified crops on their farms by 2019 by scaling up the research and delivery of nutritionally enriched crops’. |
Enhancing Digital and Innovations for Agri-food Systems and Livelihoods (eDIAL) Programme | £22 mill | 2019 | 2026 | The programme will increase productivity and incomes for farmers by harnessing digital and innovation; generate evidence on scalable approaches to deliver market access for smallholders at scale; and mainstream this evidence by improving open data policies in FCDO focus countries. The programme will support FCDO country offices with other UK ODA to maximise opportunities from digital in agriculture and market systems programmes. eDIAL has four components: partnership with the BMGF Digital Farmer Services portfolio, (2) partnership with GSMA on MNO-agribusiness investments, (3) support to GODAN on open data for ag, and (4) a new demand-driven facility to support country offices and other UK ODA with technical assistance for programme design and piloting new technologies. |
Future of Agriculture in Rwanda | £29 mill | 2019 | 2022 | The programme will sustainably increase agricultural productivity and benefit poor farming households, through greater commercialisation of Rwandan agriculture. This will lead to an enhanced contribution of agriculture to economic growth, food security and poverty reduction |
Chars Livelihoods Programme 2 | £72 mill | 2009 | 2016 | To improve the food security, livelihoods and incomes of extremely poor people living on the Riverine Char Islands of North-Western Bangladesh |
Building Resilience in Ethiopia | £345 mill | 2017 | 2024 | To build Ethiopia’s resilience to shocks by seeking to support the Government of Ethiopia to lead an effective and accountable humanitarian response system. It will have four key strands: Providing technical assistance to the Government of Ethiopia to lead and deliver an effective and accountable humanitarian response , delivering food and cash to people in humanitarian need in the most effective way, respond to emergency humanitarian needs in the most effective way and monitoring, evaluation and learning to strengthen humanitarian delivery in Ethiopia. |
Support to the Global Agriculture and Food Security Programme (GAFSP) | £186 mill | 2012 | 2031 | To improve agricultural productivity in developing countries and to increase farmers' access to markets whilst increasing the economic resilience of poor people globally |
Propcom+ - Supporting economic development in conflict and climate affected regions in Nigeria. | £92 mill | 2022 | 2030 | To support inclusive and resilient growth by promoting a transformation of Nigeria’s rural economy. It will do this by addressing the key challenges in environmental, social, and economic dimensions of Nigeria’s food and land-use system. To increase the incomes and climate resilience of 3.79 million poor and vulnerable men and women in Nigeria by: (a) scaling-up Proven climate-smart business models and markets; (b) developing and Piloting new business models that improve productivity, enhance resilience to climate change, and reduce emissions, and (c) supporting enabling Policies for an improved enabling environment for sustainable land and agricultural systems. |
WASH and EFSL Interventions in Hodeidah Governorate of Yemen | £84 mill | 2011 | 2015 | Due to prolonged crisis, malnutrition was prevalent in the country. Oxfam provides cash assistance to vulnerable households to fulfil basic food and non -food needs. These communities are providing hygiene awareness sessions to reduce health risks. Oxfam has comparative advantage because of its organisational competence in cash transfer programming. Through early recovery interventions, Oxfam will also aim at improving the livelihoods conditions of targeted communities through provision of productive assets with required means and skills. |
Supporting Humanitarian Assistance and Protection in Afghanistan Programme (SHAPE) | £122 mill | 2023 | 2026 | This three-year programme will deliver life-saving protection services, multi-sectoral emergency assistance (including food, shelter, non-food items etc.) and support for humanitarian system coordination and monitoring and learning across FCDO’s main humanitarian programmes. It will support millions of people at highest risk living in Afghanistan. |
Building Local Resilience in Syria (BLRS) | £54 mill | 2022 | 2027 | The Building Local Resilience in Syria (BLRS) programme will take an integrated approach to help Syrians in need to feed themselves and their families. It will help around 65,000 Syrians in need per year to be less reliant on harmful coping behaviours (like skipping meals, child labour, or recruitment to violent and extremist groups) and less dependent on emergency aid, and to be more self-reliant and more economically and socially resilient to shocks and stresses. It will deliver interventions at local level, and particularly target women, young people, and those with disabilities, whom we know are especially vulnerable in the various Syria contexts. |
Global Fund For Coral Reefs (GFCR) | £33 mill | 2021 | 2025 | Coral reefs are amongst the most valuable ecosystems on earth, harbouring the highest biodiversity of any ecosystem, supporting 25% of marine life and providing a myriad of benefits to thousands of species. The Global Fund for Coral Reefs (GFCR) is a project within the Blue Planet Fund portfolio. The GFCR is the first Multi-partner Trust Fund for Sustainable Development Goal 14. It provides finance for coral reefs with particular attention on Small Island Developing States. The GFCR promotes a ‘protect-transform-restore-recover’ approach through the creation and management of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) to save and protect coral reefs in the face of serious decline and extinction. The GFCR has four main outcomes: Protect priority coral reef sites and climate change-affected refugia Transforming the livelihoods of coral reef-dependent communities Restoration and adaptation technologies Recovery of coral reef-dependent communities to major shocks |
UK Blue Carbon Fund | £14 mill | 2018 | 2024 | The Fund will promote the sustainable management, conservation and restoration of mangrove habitats by developing and embedding operational blue carbon markets across the Caribbean and Latin America that provide local communities with a sustainable income and assist in moving low-income countries towards low-emission, climate-resilient development. |
Democratic Republic of Congo- Humanitarian Innovation, Response and Reform programme (DRCHIRRP) | £332 mill | 2017 | 2022 | The majority of the funding in this Business Case will provide lifesaving assistance in response to urgent humanitarian needs, while at the same time continuing to reform the international humanitarian response. Over five years the programme will aim to; Support over 620,000 people with food assistance, cash and voucher transfers; Provide up to 220,000 children under the age of 5 with nutrition related interventions; Provide over 1.1m people with greater access to clean drinking water and 900,000 with health care; Provide increased protection for over 195,000 children through improved access to education; Support over 12,000 trauma victims with medical, psycho-social or economic assistance; Provide safe humanitarian access through the United Nations Humanitarian Air Service. The programme will be delivered through both bilateral and multilateral partners, including the DRC Humanitarian Fund, ICRC, UN agencies, INGOs and private contractors. |
Ethiopia Crises 2 Resilience (EC2R) | £163 mill | 2022 | 2025 | The Ethiopia Crises to Resilience (EC2R) programme is aimed to alleviate the impact of the conflict and drought to the poorest Ethiopians. The programme tries to address urgent humanitarian needs while maintaining the delivery of essential services across the country. |
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