15 posts categorized "Good Governance"

The new government of President Otto Perez Molina has initiated a program called “Hunger Zero” to combat chronic malnutrition in Guatemala.  Despite being a so-called Middle Income Country (a rung above the poorest countries, as measured by the size of the national economy), chronic malnutrition remains a persistent problem, with rates in certain areas as high as those in the poorest countries in Africa.

According to the head of the Food and Nutritional Security Secretariat (SESAN), Luis Enrique Monterroso, the project will begin in the hardest-hit municipalities and then expand to all 166 municipalities affected significantly by hunger. Included in the Hunger Zero program are nutrition interventions focused on the 1,000 Days "window of opportunity," from pregnancy until a child's second birthday. The government has also created the Dignity Triangle program, which focuses on food availability, access, and nutrition education.

Bread for the World is a strong supporter of the 1,000 Days Partnership and the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement, which advocate for improved nutrition in pregnant women and children during this critical period. At this stage of life, the effects of malnutrition can cause irreversible damage to brain development, cognitive abilities, and resistance to diseases. Guatemala is also a supporter of these initiatives, which share key objectives with the new government’s anti-hunger programs.

The recently appointed head of SESAN happens to be a friend of Bread for the World! When Bread hosted the SUN Civil Society Working Group meeting that followed our 2011 National Gathering, Luis Enrique was there representing his country. His skills and commitment to ending hunger and malnutrition in Guatemala were evident to Otto Perez during his election campaign. He was asked to head this very important office, which is responsible for coordinating the efforts of 13 government ministries and reports directly to Guatemala's Vice President.

Todd Post, editor of Bread for the World Institute's Hunger Report, and I recently traveled to Guatemala and were able to meet with Luis Enrique in his new capacity. He is excited about the challenge before him and expressed his thanks for Bread for the World's support in giving him the opportunity to learn about SUN, which is just getting started in Guatemala.  He has already set an ambitious goal: reducing hunger by 10 percent within four years. He has also begun to work on Hunger Zero by identifying the 166 most malnourished of the country's 366 municipalities.

Guatemala is a country that faces many challenges – social, political, and economic. It is also a country that has correctly identified addressing the root causes of malnutrition as key to its future success.  Let’s follow the developments there and wish “our man in Guatemala” great success!

    Scott Bleggi is a senior international policy analyst with Bread for the World Institute.

South Korea was a fitting site for the  Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF-4), held last week in the seaside city of Busan. As host, South Korea provided a concrete example of how aid can be an effective catalyst for development if it is supported by the values of transparency, mutual accountability, and strong multi-stakeholder engagement.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the Busan Forum      Photo Credit:Miriam Gathigah /IPS

For three days, delegates from governments and civil society all over the world met to review progress on implementing the principles of the Paris Declaration, which were articulated in 2005 as key ingredients in the effort to make development assistance more effective. In Busan, a main focus was how to maintain the relevance of the aid effectiveness agenda given the quickly changing development landscape.

Today’s foreign assistance landscape is drastically different from that of 20 years ago. Presently, more development actors are on the scene, and emerging donors are contributing to significant shifts in how foreign aid is given and used. Two decades ago, aid from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development‘s (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) member countries comprised about 80 percent of all global development assistance. Today, this amount is closer to 50 percent. Significant increases in assistance from non-DAC countries—notably Brazil, India, and China—are fueling this change.

But it’s important to note that although the international community often characterizes them as new or emerging donors, many of these countries have a long history of development cooperation. It’s just that non-DAC donors have been largely outside the traditional aid frameworks.

So far, there’s been no effective mechanism to bring together the diverse range of interests and perspectives of current development actors. Beyond financial resources, emerging donors bring distinctive philosophies, expertise, and modalities to their cooperation, often based on their shared development trajectories with their partner countries. Some of these are:

• A keen interest in transfer of technical and human capacities, which they view as at least as important as financial resources;

• A willingness to try newer approaches such as budget support and programmatic lending;

• An interest in helping to build infrastructure through public-private financing, which expands the range of financial instruments available for development.

Among the highlights of the Busan forum was the increased interest in signing onto the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI). Transparency was one of the most widely discussed issues during the negotiations. Among the new signatories are the United States, the Canadian International Development Agency, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the U.N. Capital Development Fund, which all joined IATI last week.

The forum in Busan marked a turning point for international development cooperation. The outcome document - the Busan Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation- was signed by ministers of developed, emerging, and developing nations, leading partners in South-South cooperation, and civil society organizations. It calls for commitment from all partners to the shared principles of country ownership, results, transparency, and accountability that underpin the global partnership for effective development. The document acknowledges that while development cooperation is only part of the solution, it plays a catalytic and indispensable role in supporting poverty eradication, social protection, economic growth, and sustainable development. This declaration establishes the first-ever agreed framework for development cooperation that embraces traditional donors, South-South partnerships, emerging donors such as the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) countries, civil society organizations, and private funders.

But this document alone is insufficient, and it doesn’t guarantee that traditional and new donors and partner countries will work together to improve the impact of aid on development. The commitments contained in the Busan Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation must be accompanied by strong political will and action.

With more players in the game now, donors and partner countries must strengthen development effectiveness by taking important measures:

•  Cooperation must be aligned to national development strategies. Moreover, these strategies must be developed through broad-based processes with the participation of civil society organizations, academic institutions, and independent media.

• Transparency and mutual accountability must be enhanced, including that of Southern donors and countries to each other and to their citizens.

Two successive droughts in the Horn of Africa have left both farmers and pastoralists unable to produce food for their families. Photo United Nations/Albert Gonzalez Farran.

Durban, South Africa, is currently hosting 30,000 delegates from all over the world, gathered for 12 days of talks organized under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.

In one sense, of course, climate change affects everyone since we all live on this planet. But in another sense, it is poor people in developing countries who are suffering most of its effects -- even though they contribute the least to the greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change.

As Dr. Kumi Naidoo, international  executive director of Greenpeace, said at the Durban conference, “We are living in a global state of environmental apartheid. Separated along the lines of rich and poor, the rich consume as they please and the poor suffer from their consumption.”

"Environmental apartheid." Dr. Naidoo was for years a leading anti-apartheid activist in his native South Africa -- this is not a comparison he would make lightly.

This year, the most severe hunger emergency in the world is in the Horn of Africa, where 13 million people are at risk and it is believed that at least 50,000 children younger than 5 have already died. The worst suffering is concentrated in Somalia and among Somali refugees who have reached Kenya or Ethiopia.

Is climate change to blame? Oxfam International examined this question in detail in its briefing paper Horn of Africa Drought: Climate Change and Future Impacts on Food Security. The short answer, in the words of the U.K. government's chief scientific adviser, is that "such events [the more frequent and more severe droughts in the Horn] have a higher probability of occurring as a result of climate change."

Oxfam, Bread for the World, and others emphasize that drought does not have to lead to famine. A host of factors collided to produce famine in Somalia -- including  drought, crop failure, widespread deaths among herd animals, continuous conflict, government neglect, deep poverty, lack of transportation infrastructure, and inequality. Other parts of the Horn also experienced the droughts and significant increases in hunger, but nowhere else did droughts lead to full-fledged famine.

It goes without saying that prompt measures to prevent further climate change must be implemented -- easier said than done, as the delegates in Durban must know. Another, even more urgent, part of the global response must be to reduce the vulnerability of poor people in poor countries who are bearing the brunt of the current phase of climate change -- the part that can no longer be prevented.

As the Institute's recently released 2012 Hunger Report points out in a section called “Sustainable, Productive Agriculture amid Climate Change," data from West Africa shows that children born in drought years are far more likely to be malnourished. Using data such as this, analysts calculate that if current trends continue,  climate change could increase child malnutrition by  20 percent by 2050.  Other recent Hunger Reports also offer insight into the connection between climate change and hunger -- and what can be done to break that connection. 

+The 2012 Hunger Report is available at www.hungerreport.org

Michele Learner is associate editor for Bread for the World Institute.

During their June 2011 meeting in Paris, the agriculture ministers of the G-20 countries highlighted the vital role of global agriculture—both now and for the future. In the Ministerial Declaration - Action Plan on Food Price Volatility and Agriculture - the Ministers also acknowledged that strong global governance is an indispensable element for achieving food security, nutrition, and security, and called for greater policy coherence.

These are good first steps. A lot more is needed urgently.

According to the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), food prices have now reached peak levels not seen since the 1970s as maize (corn), wheat, and sugar prices have doubled or tripled over the last year. The sudden spikes in staple food prices that began in 2007 have ushered in an era of high prices combined with volatility. These conditions affect all families, but especially those who are poor—because poor people spend so much of their entire incomes, often 50 percent to 70 percent, on food. It is very difficult for them to adjust to rapid price increases because there is little discretionary spending in the household budget. There are also indirect economic costs. When food prices increase and families have less to spend on other goods and services, there is further weakening of already fragile local and national economies. In many low-income countries, high food prices are a major direct contributor to hunger and poverty.

Food Prices in Somalia—Price Changes (June 2010 - June 2011)

Source: FAO GIEWS

Large changes in family income due to price swings such as these can reduce children’s consumption of key nutrients during the first 1, 000 days of life from conception- leading to a permanent reduction of their future earning capacity, increasing the likelihood of future poverty and thus slowing the economic development process.

Given the complex web of factors that affect global food security, international organizations and the governments of both developed and developing countries must use a comprehensive approach to prevent a food crisis from reoccurring.

This week, on November 3-4, G-20 leaders will meet in Cannes, where they must find ways to deal with the increasing global food price volatility that is hurting poorer countries. At Cannes, the G-20 leaders should:

• Commit to providing more resources for investment in agriculture or at least to honoring their promises to fund the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP)
• Look to institutional development and assist Africa in the development of privately-held commodity exchanges;
• Discuss the links between biofuel policies and food prices, with a view to mitigating the impact of biofuels on food prices;
• Agree to avoid export restrictions on food;
• Make progress toward liberalizing trade in agriculture and reducing the most distortionary aspects of tariff escalation and non-tariff barriers.

A food-security strategy that relies on a combination of increased small holder productivity in agriculture, greater policy predictability and general openness to trade will be more effective to addressing global food security.

Former presidents John Agyekum Kufuor and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva have been selected to jointly receive the 2011 World Food Prize for their personal commitment and visionary leadership while serving as the presidents of Ghana and Brazil, respectively. Their exemplary leadership demonstrates the crucial role of effective policies, proper institutional foundations, and partnerships in driving development progress.

Under President Kufuor's leadership, Ghana became the first sub-Saharan African country to meet Millennium Development Goal 1 – by cutting in half both the proportion of its people suffering from hunger and the proportion living on less than $1 a day. Ghana saw a reduction in its poverty rate from 51.7 percent in 1991 to 26.5 percent in 2008, while hunger decreased from 34 percent in 1990 to 9 percent in 2004.

President Kufuor’s economic reforms, including the Food and Agriculture Sector Development Policy, provided incentives and strengthened public investments in the agriculture and food sector — the backbone of Ghana’s economy — which grew at a rate of 5.5 percent between 2003 and 2008. Growth in the agricultural sector drove expansion in the national economy, with GDP quadrupling by 2008.

Under President Kufuor, the Agricultural Extension Service was reactivated and special attention paid to educating farmers on best practices. As a result, Ghana’s cocoa production doubled between 2002 and 2005. Production of food crops such as maize, cassava, yams, and plantains, as well as livestock production, also increased significantly.

The Ghana School Feeding Program launched by President Kufuor provided one nutritious locally produced meal a day for school children in kindergarten to junior high school (ages 4 through 14). By ensuring nutritious food at school, the program dramatically reduced the level of chronic hunger and malnutrition while improving school attendance. By the end of 2010, more than 1 million primary school children were participating and benefiting from this program.

Photo: Office of former President John Kufuor

Ghana’s political stability, economic reforms, agricultural development, and significant reduction of hunger and poverty led to an award of $547 million from the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation in 2006. The Kufuor government applied the entire grant toward modernizing agriculture for rural development, increasing the production and productivity of high-value cash and food staple crops, and raising farmers' incomes.

In Brazil, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva made a commitment that fighting hunger and poverty would be a top priority of his government. He called upon all elements of Brazilian society to embrace his goals of ensuring three meals a day for all citizens, alleviating poverty, enhancing educational opportunities for children, and achieving greater inclusion of poor people in society.

President Lula da Silva’s national initiatives — embodied in his Zero Hunger strategy — were well aligned with the Millennium Development Goals. During his tenure, MDG 1 was exceeded before the 2015 deadline, as Brazil reduced by half its proportion of hungry people and also reduced the percentage of Brazilians living in extreme poverty from 12 percent in 2003 to 4.8 percent in 2009.

More than 10 government ministries were focused on the expansive Zero Hunger programs, which provided greater access to food, strengthened family farms and rural incomes, and increased school enrollment among children of primary school age. President Lula da Silva encouraged state and municipal governments to work together with civil society and the private sector--a strategy that was central to the rapid and significant decrease in the levels of poverty and hunger across the country.

Zero Hunger quickly became one of the most successful food and nutritional security policies in the world through its broad network of programs, including the Bolsa Familia Program, the Food Purchase Program, and the School Feeding Program.

Photo: Amy Margolies, Congressional Hunger Center

The Bolsa Familia Program, set up to provide cash aid to poor families, has been a major contributor to the reduction of poverty. Another important pillar of Zero Hunger was the Food Purchase Program, which linked local production directly with expanding food consumption and contributed to rural development by acquiring food directly from smallholder farmers. Distribution of food to poor families was through public schools, community restaurants, assisted living facilities, daycare centers, and related organizations. 

The national School Feeding Program has had a far-reaching impact on reducing child malnutrition by providing nutritious meals to children in all grades of Brazilian public schools. In 2010, 47 million students were being served and a minimum of 30 percent of the food was being supplied by local farms. Child malnutrition fell 61.9 percent between 2003 and 2009, and all age groups improved their access to quality food.

We can end hunger and poverty in our time!

How do you communicate important messages on nutrition, health, and child care among women who have little formal education and can’t read or write? Bread senior policy analyst Scott Bleggi accompanied staff from World Vision to a rural village west of Ghana’s capital, Accra.

In Ghana, there have been remarkable gains in improving the nutrition of mothers and children, but persistent problems of anemia (lack of iron) remain. More than half of all women are anemic, as are 75 percent of children younger than 5. Donor organizations in Ghana, including World Vision, have a long history of outreach programs designed to educate expectant and new mothers about how improved nutrition can make pregnancy safer and healthier and help their children get off to the best possible start in life.

In cooperation with the Ministry of Health’s Ghana Health Service, World Vision designed an innovative Behavior Change Communication (BCC) education program. It has been successful because it uses traditional communication means at both the village and district levels. Mothers themselves have proven to be very effective messengers. Mother-to-Mother support groups—such as the one Bleggi visited at a health center shared by two villages—can educate and, at the same time, help create new nutrition advocates in villages.

A question and answer session on how nutrition is valuable. (Photo by Scott Bleggi/Bread for the World Institute)

Ghanaians use song as a way of communicating socio-cultural history and as an educational strategy. Once a song is learned and sung a few times, people can convey and reinforce the information in the song’s verses simply by singing the song again or teaching it to others. Ghana Health Service works with traditional birth attendants in villages—who are usually highly-respected older women, often grandmothers—and with community volunteers, who may be fathers or other family members. World Vision trains Community-based Surveillance Volunteers who both educate others in their communities and report key health-related data to a district-level coordinator. With widespread use of cell phones, the volunteers can quickly report in and receive further training. They work throughout rural communities, encouraging prenatal health care and helping with important postnatal practices such as exclusive breastfeeding and proper nutrition for both moms and babies.

In Saltpong-Biriwa, located along the coast 150 kilometers from Accra, an active group of more than 60 mothers who have newborn babies or children under 2 meets regularly at the community health center. These well-attended gatherings offer an opportunity to socialize, exchange ideas, and learn about health, nutrition, and health care. During Bleggi’s visit, the group sang “the breastfeeding song” for him. The Behavior Change Communication messages—aka the verses of the song—are: practice exclusive breastfeeding (no other food or drink) for 6 months; begin breastfeeding within 30 minutes of the birth; breastfeed because it provides all the nutrition a baby needs; and give babies the best start in life by breastfeeding.

The village birth attendant is an older mother who commands great respect and is an excellent message giver.

Nutrition improvements are a key part of the U.S. government’s Feed the Future and Global Health initiatives. The Scaling Up Nutrition or SUN movement and the 1,000 Days Partnership encourage national governments and civil society organizations to ramp up nutrition programs—with an emphasis on maternal/child nutrition from pregnancy through the child’s second birthday. In Ghana, there is a well-coordinated effort that includes support from the U.S. government (through the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID) and other donor governments; leadership and support from the Ghanaian government; educational and other programs planned and implemented by civil society organizations around the country; and local communications and data collection from a network of grassroots volunteers. The result is a remarkable improvement in nutrition and women’s health.

World Vision has been working in Ghana since 1979 on food security and nutrition programs. Past projects have had significant results—for example, World Vision’s Micronutrient and Health (MICAH) project, which ran from 1997 to 2005, reduced wasting (a child too thin for her height) in children under 5 by 13 percent, stunting (a child too short for his age) by 4 percent, underweight (children who weigh too little for their age) by 11 percent, and anemia by 44 percent from baseline measures.

Following Ghana’s example—with government leadership, communication and collaboration at all levels of program implementation, and volunteers who reinforce and sustain nutrition and health messaging—could put many more countries on track to meet Millennium Development Goal 1, to radically reduce hunger and malnutrition.

The militant group Shabab, closely linked to Al Qaeda, controls large parts of southern Somalia, including famine-stricken areas and sections of the capital city, Mogadishu. In what is being described as a glimmer of hope in the growing humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa, Shabab has now pulled out of Mogadishu, where an estimated 100,000 malnourished people have arrived to seek help. According to The New York Times, relief workers are hopeful that food supplies and other assistance will now be able to reach starving people in the city.

As a “failed state” that has lacked an effective central government since the early 1990s, Somalia has been largely unable to provide its people with basic public services. The transitional government is now in control of the capital for the first time in years. Yet its own troops are reported to have killed people and looted sacks of grain during a recent riot over emergency food supplies, adding to the concern of relief organizations.

Elsewhere in the region, people who have fled to southeast Ethiopia’s refugee camps are facing an outbreak of measles on top of severe malnutrition. According to health workers, more than a dozen people in the Kobe camp have already died of the disease, which rarely kills healthy people but is often fatal to those who are weak from malnutrition. The conditions in refugee camps are ripe for diseases such as measles and illnesses related to sanitation, such as dysentery. Bread for the World Institute’s own Faustine Wabwire said in an interview on August 5 that her greatest fear was “increased mortality from potential disease outbreaks.” On August 8, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees added that he “fears the outbreak could lead to high mortality and serious illness in an already vulnerable refugee population whose overall health was already fragile.”

Vaccination teams need to reach as many refugee children as possible. Experts are on their way to the camp to help with the vaccination effort, scheduled to begin August 9. The Dollo Ado camp in southeast Ethiopia is host to 118,400 refugees, 78,000 of whom arrived this year because of the drought and ensuing hunger emergency.

Recently Secretary of State Hillary Clinton officially launched Feed the Future in Tanzania.

In her address to a group of Tanzanian women farmers, Clinton pointed out that nutrition is closely connected to agricultural development. She said that “profound transformation” could occur in Tanzania’s fertile southern region, “because where women learn the best ways to grow and cultivate their own nutritious food which they use to feed their children and sell at market, we see progress.” She added: “I was pleased to hear that already the diversity of crops here is making a difference in the nutritional status of your children.”

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks with Tanzanian women farmers at Mlandizi Farm Women's Cooperative in Mlandizi, Tanzania, on June 12, 2011. State Department photo

During her visit, Clinton also recorded a video address to participants in 1,000 Days to Scale Up Nutrition for Mothers and Children: Building Political Will, co-hosted June 13 by Bread for the World Institute and leading Irish development organization Concern Worldwide.

In the message, now available on the USAID website, Clinton emphasized the importance of nutrition for the 1,000-day “window of opportunity” from pregnancy to a child’s second birthday. The evidence is clear: malnutrition during this period causes damage to physical and cognitive development that is largely irreversible. Clinton also announced the redesigned thousanddays.org, which will enable the global nutrition community to share ideas, lessons learned, and notes from the field.

The Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP) has also just announced that Four countries will receive a total of $160 million in direct funding to support the agriculture and food security plans that they are already developing.

Feed the Future, GAFSP, and other recent global food security initiatives recognize not only that poverty is the cause of hunger, but also that hunger and malnutrition are, in turn, major causes of poverty.

It is far harder for hungry people to escape poverty:

• They have less energy for physical activity, so their work is generally less productive. Yet their labor is usually the only asset they have.
• Their capacity for physical and intellectual development is diminished. Hungry children grow more slowly, encounter more trouble learning, and have lower school attendance and achievement. Hunger compromises investments in education
• Hungry people have higher rates of disease and premature death, because hunger causes serious long-term damage to human health.
• Hunger passes from generation to generation: hungry mothers give birth to underweight infants who start life with a handicap.
• Hunger contributes to social and political instability, undermining governments’ capacity for effective efforts to reduce poverty.

Attention to both hunger and poverty—and to both agriculture and nutrition—must be part of any plan to reduce either hunger or poverty in a sustainable way.

The Institute’s 2011 Hunger Report, Our Common Interest: Ending Hunger and Malnutrition, has just become available online at www.hungerreport.org. The 2010 Hunger Report, A Just and Sustainable Recovery, which had been the default landing page till today, remains available on the site along with the 2009 report, Global Development: Charting a New Course.

Who will feed the future? Nepal is one country where the U.S. will increase investments in agriculture. Photo: Richard Lord

At the 2009 G-8 Summit in L’Aquila, U.S. leadership was instrumental in gaining the commitment of member nations to $22 billion to improve global food and nutrition security. For its part, the Obama administration developed its own initiative, Feed the Future. Bread for the World, along with several U.S. civil society groups, provided input into the design of the program. The 2011 Hunger Report is concerned with events that led to the establishment of Feed the Future and with what it will take for the initiative to succeed.

The report argues that Feed the Future is a bold step forward in U.S. foreign assistance, possibly the best opportunity to come along in decades for the United States to contribute to lasting progress against global hunger and malnutrition. Feed the Future stands out with its dual focus on boosting incomes of smallholder farmers and improving the nutritional status of mothers and children, the groups most at risk of hunger and malnutrition.

The report starts with the spike in food prices in 2007-08 that pushed the number of people who suffer from hunger to more than a billion for the first time in history. Prices have fallen since then and so has the number of undernourished people, but as we are seeing in 2010, grain markets are still quite volatile, and so food prices remain a great concern.

For children born in the poorest parts of the world during the 2007-2008 food-price crisis, higher food prices meant that their families could not afford staple foods let alone the more nutritious foods. A series of articles in the British medical journal, the Lancet, published in early 2008 had immediate relevance, as it pointed out that malnutrition during the window of opportunity during pregnancy and in the first two years of life has irreversible consequences for a child. For children who survive early childhood malnutrition, the physical and cognitive setbacks are lifelong, leaving children more prone to illness throughout their lives and reducing earning potential.  

The 2011 Hunger Report includes several recommendations to strengthen Feed the Future and U.S. foreign assistance more broadly. Feed the Future must take a comprehensive approach to fighting hunger and malnutrition, adopting the following elements: increase the productivity of smallholder farmers, help them reach markets, take advantage of the links between agriculture and nutrition while scaling up evidence-based nutrition interventions (especially for pregnant women and young children), empower women, strengthen safety nets, and respond quickly to hunger emergencies.  

Dr. Rajiv Shah, USAID administrator, described "Our Common Interest" as "The best report I've seen in years on this issue" in remarks at the National Press Club.

Moreover, the report argues, Congress should rewrite the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act to make clear that poverty reduction and development are key elements of U.S. foreign policy and reduce earmarks to ensure that U.S. development assistance has the flexibility to respond to realities on the ground. U.S. food aid should be improved to allow for a greater focus on nutritional quality, especially to reach infants and young children. In addition, the United States should take the lead in strengthening international institutions that are complementary to U.S. bilateral assistance in fighting hunger and malnutrition.

After decades of underinvestment in agriculture, Feed the Future is a refreshing throwback to when agriculture held a much more prominent place in U.S. foreign assistance. But Feed the Future has the potential to be much stronger than earlier U.S. programs. Its focus on country-led development is encouraging, but this must include building the capacity of national governments to sustain the progress begun with foreign assistance, and should also include building the capacity of civil society to hold national governments accountable for what they do with this assistance.

The 2011 report is available online and in print and anybody who wants to order a copy can do so via the website.  The online edition includes everything in the print edition and several other features. The Hunger Report has always been a comprehensive source for data on hunger, poverty and other development indicators. The Hunger Report website allows you to visualize these data. An assortment of information covered in the report is displayed in eye-catching graphics. 

Enjoy the report. Tell us what you think of it. And please, get the word out about it.

School feeding program in Cape Verde. Photo: UN

By Diana Millner

That question continues to be hotly debated among development professionals, policy wonks, and other stakeholders working to make aid to poor countries more effective.  By definition, it is a concept best illustrated by the country doing the “owning,” not something batted around by folks in Washington.

But still, there is a need to understand how donor country policies can better support the process of country ownership in achieving development outcomes.  Most agree that this requires, at a minimum, a commitment to responding to locally-driven solutions and to strategies designed by the countries themselves.  Supporting country ownership also requires a commitment to building the capacity of the partner governments and other stakeholders to drive development in their country.

There was a remarkable report on Cape Verde a few weeks ago that is a great example of how country ownership is a process.  It may have flown below the radar screen of the international media.  The World Food Program (WFP) partnered with Cape Verde for decades (beginning well before the U.N. Millennium Development goals (MDGs) were established) to create a national food security program.    The program includes a universal free school meal initiative, critical because school lunch is the only nutritious daily meal available to many Cape Verdean children.

The school lunches are not only a critical tool in the fight against hunger but also serve as an incentive for parents to send their children to school.  Today, 92 percent of Cape Verdean children attend school. 

There are many successes in this story.  But the most relevant to country ownership is that as of this month, the Cape Verdean government is taking over the national school feeding program.  The country is now solely responsible for both the management and the financing of the policy.

As we learned about the full transition of the WFP school feeding program to Cape Verdean authorities, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) announced that  its Cape Verdean “compact” had just become the first to be completed. Compacts are large-scale grants to promote sustainable economic growth; the $100 million Cape Verde compact was awarded in 2005 for economic growth initiatives.

 The Cape Verde compact had several positive outcomes; it helped strengthen the country’s investment climate, improved infrastructure, increased agricultural productivity, and achieved key policy reforms necessary for sustained economic growth.  Cape Verde has successfully moved to the next level and is now working on its second MCC compact – the first MCC partner country to do so.

Cape Verde’s school feeding success and its completion of the MCC compact lend support to the concept of country ownership as a development principle. They also serve as an important reality check: the process of social and economic change through supporting country ownership takes time, intense engagement, and long-term investments.