1. Introduction and Background
In the past decades, Africa has been hit by several shocks that have resulted in widespread impacts. Particularly, the last three years witnessed a series of shocks with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ukraine crisis, and natural disasters. The shocks are not only severe by themselves but also have been mutually reinforcing. Moreover, natural disasters are occurring more frequently with higher intensity in recent times (UNECA, 2023). COVID-19 has triggered a global crisis that has affected all walks of life,
resulting in a reversal of progress made in advancing livelihoods for millions of people (Fall and Court, 2021). Studies show that the onset of COVID-19 affected the health, poverty, and food security status of the continent and seriously challenged the wellbeing of the most vulnerable groups. For Africa as a whole, the pandemic resulted in the first economic recession in more than two decades, added millions of people to the undernourished category, and reversed progress made in reducing hunger and malnutrition (Tefera et al., 2021).
Similarly, the Ukraine crisis led to deteriorating food security status in several countries in Africa, in particular in countries that heavily depend on wheat and fertilizer imports from Ukraine and Russia (Badiane, Fofana and Sall, 2022; Ehui et al., 2022). In addition to these global crises, Africa has been severely challenged by climate change, locust outbreaks, and drought in recent periods (Flowers, 2022). All these shocks put significant negative pressure on vulnerable communities and risk exacerbating poverty and malnutrition problems.
It is not normal, nor should it be acceptable, particularly for national and community leaders, that every shock leads to such large-scale suffering and destruction of livelihoods. It is therefore imperative, and actually feasible, for governments to devise and implement effective measures to boost the preparedness and response capacity among the most vulnerable communities. This requires taking deliberate action that boosts community resilience through sustained action, in normal times, to address the key drivers of vulnerability, as well as better targeted interventions when crises hit.
The first step and most urgent action is to make the necessary investments in better understanding the nature, patterns and drivers of community vulnerability to guide the above action and interventions. If lack of access to health services is a major driver of vulnerability, then a long-term priority action should be to invest in preventive health services and other programs in target areas. Likewise, if vulnerability is related to marginal environments leading to low productivity and crops that are poor in micronutrients, then the focus would be on how to improve farm practices, farm management, and access to improved varieties to help boost the intake of micronutrient-dense foods in such communities. Alternatively, if the root cause of vulnerability is lack of access to infrastructure or markets, then this needs to be addressed during normal times before crises hit. Finally, if high prevalence of chronic disease is undermining the capacity of a community to absorb shocks, then the appropriate course of action would be to invest in normal times in reducing the prevalence of such diseases.
This is what investing in understanding the patterns and the nature of vulnerability allows us to do. Once we know the causes of vulnerability, deliberate action needs to take place to drive the vulnerability down. More importantly, better understanding of vulnerability and its root causes allows governments to fine tune responses during times of crisis because they know exactly which communities are likely to be hit first and hardest and what levers to use to boost capacities to absorb shocks.
This paper proposes simple and low-cost strategies to systematically address the challenges and issues mentioned above. Section 2 below briefly describes the effect of the Ukraine crisis in selected African countries to illustrate the level of unpreparedness to take on shocks. Section 3 presents a comprehensive indicator of vulnerability that captures both the patterns and long-term drivers of vulnerability. It is followed in Section 4 by a discussion of the household micronutrient adequacy gap as an indicator for targeting and tracking short-term interventions to respond to shocks during crises. The last section provides a summary of findings and conclusions.
2. Recent Crises Revealed the Chronic Vulnerability and Unpreparedness of African Countries
It is true that shocks happen everywhere in the world. However, the question that we need to answer is why, in the case of many African countries, do shocks routinely result in widespread and large-scale disruption of livelihoods, not just during crises but long after shocks have taken place? Just in recent years, shocks related to climate change have challenged the food security of millions of households in different parts of the continent. For the Sahel region or the Horn of Africa, a delayed rainy season can have dire consequences for communities (Ilboudo Nébié et al., 2021; OCHA, 2022). In recent years, several parts of Africa have been hit hard by floods, desert locusts, and drought with significant effects among the most vulnerable communities (UNCC, 2020).
The COVID-19 pandemic significantly increased the prevalence of malnutrition, pushing a large share of the population into the malnourished category (Figure 1). The crisis resulted in a situation where one-fifth of the continent’s population is considered malnourished, representing a significant change compared to the previous five years: by the end of 2021 an additional 50.5 million people were added to the category of malnourished compared to the 2019 pre-pandemic period (Figure 2). Judged by any standard, the addition of such a large number of people to the malnourished category is significant, alarming and above all unacceptable.
Africa’s recovery from COVID-19 has been hampered by the breakout of the war on Ukraine. The impact of the war on the continent’s food security has been a major area of concern because Russia and Ukraine are dominant players in major agricultural commodities. The two countries are major exporters of wheat and sunflower oil and seeds and leading suppliers of fertilizers to a sizable number of African countries (Badiane et al., 2022a; Badiane et al., 2022b). The war affected the continent through the disruption of trade, food and fuel price hikes, and the resulting macroeconomic instability (UNDP, 2022). Findings show that poverty rates are not only expected to increase following the war, but are also forecasted to persist at high levels in the coming years. Figure 3 below shows the trends in poverty levels for selected countries, which are set to rise through 2023 before stabilizing in 2024, albeit at higher levels than at the onset of the crisis in 2022.
The question here is why should a single crisis, be it as wide-ranging as COVID-19 or the Ukraine war, raise poverty levels by such high magnitude? No matter how pervasive and how comprehensive the shock has been, the level and lingering effects of its impact give rise to serious questions of preparedness and response capacity. The root causes are high levels of unaddressed chronic vulnerability combined with limited command over factors exposing communities to recurring shocks. The next two sections discuss options for how Africa could be better prepared to respond to and minimize the impacts of shocks when and where they occur.
3. Understanding Patterns and Drivers of Vulnerability for Greater Response Capacity
The proposal here is to follow what we call the Snowplow Principle. In the global North, towns and municipalities usually know where to park the snowplows before the snow falls. This is because they know exactly which part of the city and which neighborhoods will be the most affected before impending snowstorms. Snowplows are positioned and ready to go in the areas where traffic and people’s lives are known to be most exposed to disruptions. The idea here is for governments in Africa to work towards attaining a similar level of preparedness regarding crises, whether related to drought, or flood, or market disruptions. The goal is to create the necessary capacities to: (i) better understand the nature of disruptions associated with various shocks; (ii) have a clear course of action to restore normalcy; and (iii) create the tools and mechanisms to intervene when and where needed. In other words, what is needed for African countries to attain the same level of preparedness when facing shocks as municipalities in the global North when dealing with snowstorms?
The first avenue towards boosting preparedness is to better understand what drives vulnerability and how vulnerabilities are structured across all communities. For that purpose, a comprehensive and composite indicator that measures vulnerability along all its major dimensions is proposed. The composite vulnerability index (CVI) covers dimensions of poverty, malnutrition, access to infrastructure, access to health services, disease prevalence, and climate variability.
Based on the indicators listed above and following Ulimwengu, Magne Domgo and Collins (2021), we use principal component analysis (PCA) to generate scores under each dimension for each location. Prior to using PCA, indicators are transformed such that higher values correspond to greater vulnerability. Sub-indexes are then constructed by assigning each score to one of four categories, with thresholds based on the mean and standard deviation of scores for all locations. The sub-indexes are then combined with equal weight into a composite index. The thresholds are designed, assuming a normal distribution, such that approximately 25 percent of observations fall into each of the following categories or classes: a) Much more vulnerable, b) More vulnerable; c) Less vulnerable, and d) Much less vulnerable. The composite index provides an overall ex-ante picture of areas and communities that are likely to have the least capacity to absorb shocks and thus where to park the snowplow. In other words, the index can guide countries in establishing the required institutional infrastructure and creating effective programs that can be triggered for timely interventions. The constituent sub-indexes provide more information on the factors driving vulnerability and hence which type of additional equipment to put on the snowplow. That is, they can help guide the design of particular interventions that best match the actual nature of vulnerability. Both the composite and sub-indexes provide guidance for sustained government action to boost resilience in normal times, just as municipalities undertake road improvement, draining and other infrastructure investment to ameliorate conditions during snowstorms.
Figure 4 shows the example of the composite indicator and sub-indexes constructed to assess community level vulnerability to COVID-19 in Malawi. The sub-indexes included in constructing the composite indicator cover nutrition, food consumption expenditure, access to health services, disease burden, and population density (Matchaya and Nhlengethwa, 2021). Accounting for all factors that affect overall vulnerability at community level, Figure 4 reveals the communities that rank highest in terms of vulnerability, that is where the pandemic would be expected to have the most serious consequences (red color). They are the areas in which the
government needed to be equipped with the knowledge and tools for whom to target, what to do and how to do it in a timely fashion. Furthermore, the communities in red should not be particular targets of government action only during times of crises but also during normal times, when the focus should be on factors driving chronic vulnerability as determined by the set of sub-indexes. Figure 5 below maps the various sub-indexes reflecting the main driving factors of vulnerability in each community.
The approach proposed here offers guidance for possible courses of action to boost resilience and reduce vulnerability over time while raising the level of preparedness and creating capacities to respond to eventual shocks.
4. Targeting and Tracking the Impact of Interventions, Policies and Programs for Increased Response Effectiveness
The above discussion has highlighted the importance of better preparedness and more effective targeting of crisis response interventions in areas that need the most attention in tackling the impact of shocks. These are two major building blocks of what is needed to stop the devastating effects of shocks among vulnerable communities. For that, it is also necessary to be able to assess whether, when and to what extent livelihoods in affected communities have recovered and normalcy has been restored. The critical question here, therefore, is how to evaluate whether interventions are working, assess their impact and track the speed of recovery among affected households in near-real time.
The composite vulnerability indicator in the previous section cannot be used for the above purpose. The reason is that changes in its key components such as poverty, prevalence of chronic diseases or access to services take place rather slowly, in some cases in matters of years. We therefore need an indicator that is comprehensive enough and which allows to measure and track short-term changes in household livelihood status. This is similar to how emergency room doctors monitor a patient’s vital signs as they track their recovery status. When a patient undergoing a health crisis is admitted in the emergency room, the medical staff prioritize two things. The first is to take his or her temperature and blood pressure irrespective of the cause of the sickness, because they offer a good indication of whatever disruptions are affecting the human body. Second, they continue monitoring whether the patient’ vital signs are returning to within the normal range, an indication of whether their intervention is having the desired effect.
The idea here is to adopt an approach of monitoring and tracking the recovery process among affected communities that is based on the same Vital Signs Principle. Application of the principle would mean crisis management programs that would track changes in household livelihood status and prioritize speed of return to normalcy, in a way that can be tracked and monitored to assess the progress being made in near-real time. For this purpose, it is proposed to use a measure of the micronutrient adequacy gap (MAG) as an indicator of livelihood status which can be changed through crisis intervention measures and tracked in the short run to monitor success and impacts among affected households. The indicator simply measures the degree of adequacy of household intake of key micronutrients compared to recommended levels. This can be computed by using data from household consumption surveys and relevant food composition tables. The MAG indicator reflects several livelihood dimensions among target communities, such as poverty, disease prevalence, access to services, environmental degradation, etc. It is therefore closely aligned with the earlier composite vulnerability indicator but is more amenable to short run changes and thus suitable for tracking responses to emergency interventions.
The indicator can be computed for a wide range of micronutrients on the basis of available food consumption data and relevant food composition tables. This simply involves quantification of various foods consumed by the household, conversion to micronutrient equivalents using the food composition table, and comparison to recommended intake levels for each micronutrient. Intake can be calculated as an average on the basis of adult equivalents or for individual age groups and by gender. The assessment can be further disaggregated between rural or urban communities.
As part of the preparedness strategy, countries can carry out and regularly update representative household consumption surveys in the most vulnerable areas to obtain the necessary reference baseline dataset. It is useful to complement the consumption survey with a similar survey on the production side. In addition to the evidence based on the composite vulnerability indicator discussed earlier, the information from the surveys and the related nutrient adequacy gap analysis provides targeted guidance in designing resilience-building programs that would boost local production and intake of micronutrients during normal times. The information can also be used in times of crisis to determine the best type of foods and seeds to distribute in affected communities. The same surveys can then be repeated as necessary during or post emergency interventions to monitor impact and progress on the ground by comparing adequacy levels before, during and after interventions.
The map in Figure 6 below presents results from micronutrient production and consumption adequacy gap analysis among rural and urban communities of Senegal. A total of 13 nutrients are covered in the Senegal study, of which 6 (calcium, iron, zinc, protein, vitamin B12, and riboflavin) are presented here. The maps show considerable deficiency levels for calcium, riboflavin, and vitamin B12 as indicated by the red colors. Long-term resilience-building interventions in these red zones should ideally include food production (breeding, seed distribution) and consumption (school feeding, food for work, cash transfers, price subsidy) programs targeting crop and food varieties that are rich in vitamin B12, riboflavin, and calcium.
The composite vulnerability indicator and the micronutrient adequacy gap indicator complement each other in guiding the design and sequencing of resilience programs for better targeting and maximum impact during normal times and during crises. The former allows programs to address the more structural drivers of vulnerability and targeting of the most exposed communities. The latter facilitates the crafting of shorter-term interventions and the tracking of impact in near-real time.
5. Protecting Livelihood Status from Policy Shocks
The advantage of the approach to preparedness and response readiness outlined above is that it enables a more effective and timely course of action to boost resilience in normal times and protect livelihoods and restore normalcy during crises. In the real world, community livelihoods are disrupted, not only by different types of shocks but also by government policies in various sectors, albeit often in an unintended and indirect way. Community resilience strategies should include safeguards to minimize the negative impact of such policies, which contribute to eroding resilience capacities and exacerbating chronic vulnerability. For that purpose, it is possible to carry out ex-ante assessment of the impacts of regular government policies (tariffs, taxes, subsidies, export controls, price controls, etc.) among vulnerable communities by evaluating the likely impact on micronutrient adequacy gaps among vulnerable communities.
The same ex-ante analysis can also be implemented to assess the anticipated impact of impending shocks among exposed communities and thus foster readiness for action. If it is possible, for instance, to have a very early understanding of the likely effects of an unfolding drought, or flood, or market disruptions on food supplies, prices or income, the expected changes in micronutrient intake can be estimated and used as guide for timely planning of interventions and choice of appropriate instruments to protect and restore livelihoods.
What is required for the ex-ante analysis, whether in the case of government policies or impending crises, are data on how household micronutrient intake changes with changes in food prices and income. The estimation of such price and income elasticities of micronutrient demand can be carried out using the same data from the household consumption surveys. The findings of the ex-ante analysis make it possible, for instance, to determine a priori the level of price subsidy or income transfer that would compensate for the effects of a given policy change or shock to protect or restore consumption levels in targeted communities to pre-crisis levels.
Figure 7 shows estimates of the price elasticity of demand for various micronutrients for both rural and urban households in Senegal. The food items included in the assessment are cereals, pulses, vegetables and tubers, fruits, meat and fish, milk, oil, and sugar. As one would expect, the results show that demand for the micronutrients, in general, declines with rising prices. But because households adjust their consumption mix by, for instance, substituting food items with lower prices, they may shift to food alternatives with higher content of some micronutrients and thus boost intake for such micronutrients. Similarly, one would expect the elasticity of micronutrient demand to be closely linked to the behavior of demand for food items that are rich in a given micronutrient. For instance, in both urban and rural areas of Senegal, adjustment in demand for edible oil is the main determinant of the price elasticity of Vitamin A intake with respect to changes in prices, while for Vitamin B12 it is changes in meat and fish demand that drive the response to price changes. Similarly, changes in demand for cereals and pulses are important contributing factors to changes in the intake of folate, thiamin, and zinc, as well as iron.
How demand for key micronutrients changes among the same households with changes in income is shown in Figure 8. Rising income normally raises purchasing power and increases the affordability of food and thus increases demand, which in turn boosts the consumption of micronutrients. Income elasticities are higher than one for several micronutrients, e.g. vitamin B12 and calcium, indicating that an increase in income generates more than a proportionate increase in the intake of these of these nutrients. This happens when food items such as meat or milk that are consumed in greater quantities by higher income households are also dense in these micronutrients.
6. Final Recommendations
Avoidance of large scale disruptions and, oftentimes, irreversible suffering triggered by increasingly more frequent shocks requires adequate preparedness and readiness to design and implement impactful interventions to protect livelihoods among the most vulnerable households and communities. This is only possible through resilience strategies that use: (i) a comprehensive indicator that captures clearly the nature and drivers of community vulnerability to enable an efficient planning and delivery of emergency interventions that are timely and properly targeted; (ii) an indicator that can capture near-real time changes in household livelihood status and thus serve as a metric to track the impact of crisis response measures and progress towards restoration of normalcy during and immediately post emergency; and (iii) combine both to develop priority investment programs to tackle, during normal times, the most important drivers of chronic vulnerability and boost the capacity of the most exposed households and communities to absorb future shocks.
Consequently, and in order to reverse the current situation, this paper advocates for a level of preparedness, readiness and targeting akin to what is observed among well managed municipalities in temperate regions with clear operational plans to position the snowplows, adequately equipped and at the right spots, long before the first snowflakes touch the ground. That is what is referred to figuratively as the Snowplow Principle. A multidimensional vulnerability indicator is proposed that can help identify the communities that have the least capacity to absorb shocks and are thus bound to be hurt the most for adequate prioritization, timely planning, and effective execution of crisis response programs.
While adopting the above approach and principle, it is recommended to furthermore prioritize speedy recovery and return to normalcy. Just as emergency room medical staff prioritize bringing fever and blood pressure levels back within normal ranges, crisis response interventions must focus on restoration of livelihood status back to normal so as to avoid further erosion of resilience and entrenching of chronic vulnerability. The term used to illustrate this approach is the Vital Signs Principle. An indicator of the gap in micronutrient intake among target communities is proposed as a metric to monitor and track the effectiveness and progress of emergency interventions in protecting household livelihoods and restoring normalcy.
Finally, it is recommended that resilience strategies, in addition to boosting capacities to respond to shocks, invest in sustained efforts during normal times to fight the underlying causes of chronic vulnerability. This is similar to municipalities investing in emergency road infrastructure or medical staff treating the underlying health conditions that triggered the trip to the emergency room. The various components that constitute the recommended composite vulnerability index and the micronutrient adequacy gap indicator are also identifiers of the main drivers of chronic vulnerability and thus of possible priority investment areas to boost resilience and household capacities to absorb future shocks.
The approach to resilience strategies that is recommended in this paper is relatively simple to design and administer. The indicators of vulnerability and livelihood status that are proposed employ simple methods of relative scoring and ranking and use data that is readily available or easy to assemble. What is needed at most are light touch consumption surveys in target communities for baselining and during crisis times. No sophisticated software is needed, besides for the estimation of price and income elasticity parameters, which requires econometric packages but can be commissioned as a one-off task. Additional major advantages of the proposed approach are the use of indicators that are intuitive and can be represented in maps that are easy to communicate and accessible to all stakeholders, thus creating the conditions for participatory implementation and community empowerment.
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