In Search of the Resilient Sahelian : Reflections on a Fashionable Notion
dynamics . The political dimension of Sahelian resilience really comes into its own here , and highlights the contradictions , and therefore the responsibilities , of the institutions that advocate it .
Social Protection for Resilience ?
Social protection has made a strong comeback in recent years in aid discourses and practices . Once again , there is nothing new about this finding : it is pointless to expect highly vulnerable people , for whom the smallest hazard is potentially disastrous , to relay the “ good practices ” on which resilience is based . It is therefore necessary to protect the livelihoods of Sahelians from life ’ s hazards , and not simply the hazards of the market or rainfall , and to implement a diverse range of social protection methods accessible to local populations .
This primarily involves improving access to basic services , the rehabilitation of which began in the early 2000s with social policies inspired by the MDG ( Millennium Development Goals ). More recently , in relation to the resilience approach , “ preventive ” or “ productive ” social net programs have grown in popularity in Sub-Saharan Africa , most often under the auspices of the World Bank ( Leturque 2013 ). The stated goal is not only to save lives but also to sustainably transform the situation confronting people caught in the poverty trap , by maintaining safety nets outside of major crisis periods . This falls between conventional agricultural
10 World Food Program . policies based on production support and the live-saving actions of emergency response actors . This brings into focus another dimension of food security , the accessibility of food and its means of production : cash for work , one-off food aid supplies , support to capitalize agricultural holdings , guaranteed purchase via local emergency aid supply systems ( such as the P4P , Purchase For Progress , a program run by the WFP 10 ), cash transfers to increase outlets for local producers , etc . To return to the terminology used above , the main targets of these initiatives are resistance households ( between resilience and survival ), with a view to enabling them , once again at least cost , to embark on resilience trajectories .
In West Africa , social approaches to food insecurity are mostly targeted at poor farmers and breeders , that is , those who do not produce and / or do not earn enough to meet their food needs throughout the year . They are based on the idea that a sum of money , even very small , to supplement a person ’ s regular income ( conditional or otherwise ) can help households diversify their livelihoods , invest , and go beyond shortterm resistance , and can also benefit the whole community through infrastructural developments and related spending . Ethiopia is often mentioned as the example to follow , with its Productive Safety Nets Programme , based on manpower-intensive public works programs . It provided a template for the CEDEAO , for example , whose “ Zero Hunger ” initiative , launched in 2012 ,
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