Prospere Backiny-Yetna

Potential Impact of Higher Food Prices on Poverty: Summary Estimates for a Dozen West and Central African Countries

Concerns have been raised about the impact of rising food prices worldwide on the poor. To assess the impact of rising food prices in any particular country it is necessary to look at both the impact on food producers who are poor or near-poor and could benefit from an increase in prices and food consumers who are poor or near-poor and would loose out when the price increases. In most West and Central African countries, the sign (positive or negative) of the impact is not ambiguous because a substantial share of food consumption is imported, so that the negative impact for consumers is larger than the positive impact for net sellers of locally produced foods. Yet even if the sign of the impact is clear, its magnitude is not. Using a set of recent and comprehensive household surveys, this paper summarizes findings from an assessment of the potential impact of higher food prices on the poor in a dozen countries. Rising food prices for rice, wheat, maize, and other cereals as well as for milk, sugar and vegetable oils could lead to a substantial increase in poverty in many of the countries. At the same time, the data suggest that the magnitude of the increase in poverty between different countries is likely to be different. Finally, the data suggest that a large share of the increase in poverty will consist of deeper levels of poverty among households who are already poor, even if there will also be a larger number of poor households in the various countries.

Liberia's Cash for Work Temporary Employment Project : responding to crisis in low income, fragile countries

Together with reductions in indirect taxes on food imports, cash for work programs were one of the main responses implemented by African governments following the food, fuel, and financial crisis of recent years. The main objective of those programs was to help the poor cope with the various shocks by increasing their net earnings through community-level work paid for under the programs. Yet it is unclear whether these cash for work programs indeed reached their intended beneficiaries and to what degree they generated other, potentially long-term beneficial impacts. This paper explores these issues in the context of Liberia and the performance of the Cash for Work Temporary Employment Program (CfWTEP) funded by the World Bank through an emergency crisis facility in response to the 2007/2008 food crisis. Both quantitative and qualitative data are presented, focusing on the operational and policy experiences emerging from program implementation. This paper analyzes the context that led to the creation and implementation of the CfWTEP in Liberia, the nature and administrative arrangements for the program, and its operational performance. The objective is to share the lessons learned from evaluation findings so that they can be useful for implementing similar programs in the future in Liberia itself or in other countries. Findings from the analysis highlight the possibilities of implementing public works program in low capacity, post conflict setting and the scope for using the program as a springboard towards a broader and more comprehensive social safety net.

Gender Differentials and Agricultural Productivity in Niger

Most of the poor in Sub-Saharan Africa live in rural areas where agriculture is the main income source. This agriculture is characterized by low performance and its productivity growth has been identified as a key driver of poverty reduction. In Niger, as in many other African countries, productivity is even lower among female peasants. To build policy interventions to improve agricultural productivity among women, it is important to measure the potential gap between men and women and understand the determinants that explain the gap. This paper uses the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition methodology at the aggregate and detailed levels to identify the factors that explain the productivity gap. The analysis finds that in Niger on average plots managed by women produce 19 percent less per hectare than plots managed by men. It also finds that the gender gap tends to be widest among Nigers most productive farmers. The primary factors that contribute to the gender productivity gap in Niger are: (i) farm labor, with women facing significant challenges in accessing, using, and supervising male farm labor; (ii) the quantity and quality of fertilizer use, with men using more inorganic fertilizer per hectare than women; and (iii) land ownership and characteristics, with men owning more land and enjoying higher returns to ownership than women.