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From food aid to food security: the case of the Safety Net policy in Ethiopia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 May 2010

Carly Bishop  and
Dorothea Hilhorst
Carly Bishop*
Affiliation:
Disaster Studies, Wageningen University, The Netherlands
Dorothea Hilhorst*
Affiliation:
Disaster Studies, Wageningen University, The Netherlands
*
Email: cn.bishop@yahoo.com
Email: thea.hilhorst@wur.nl
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Abstract

Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) is an attempt to bring food security to 5 million people by providing them with social security to close the yearly hunger gap, coupled with development projects to lift them permanently out of poverty. The programme is an example of the new policy arrangements that aim to link relief to social security and development. This paper analyses the early implementation of the PSNP in two villages of the Amhara Region. The paper shows how the programme was in practice interpreted and used by local authorities to realise a related programme of voluntary resettlement, and how this locally changed the objective from helping the most vulnerable people, to reserving the benefits of the programme for the more affluent and economically potent households. It shows how local responses to food security policies were informed by institutional patterns, discourses about food insecurity and the articulation of policy with adjacent or past policy practices.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , June 2010 , pp. 181 - 202
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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