Determinants of Graduation from Safety Net Program: A Case Study in Chiro District, Oromia National Regional State, Ethiopia
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Date
2019-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This dissertation deals with chronically food insecure rural households’ graduation from
external assistance, more specifically from PSNP Program. The main purpose is to explore
factors that affect households progress to graduation and their food security statuses then after.
In pursuit of this general purpose, the study explores and analyzes how the interplay among
households` vulnerability context, level of their access to different livelihood resources and
policy implementation influence the food security status of households and their progress to
graduation. The central argument is that households’ vulnerability factors, lack of access to
adequate livelihood resources and impaired policy implementations limited households
progress towards graduation. Rural sustainable livelihood framework was adopted to
comprehensively grasp households’ characteristics, access to different livelihood assets, policy
related factors, and households’ food security outcome.
Qualitative and quantitative data were drawn from both primary and secondary sources. The
primary data was drawn from stakeholders at different levels with varied capacity of program
implementation, and mainly from case study households in Chiro District kebeles in West
Harerghe Zone of Oromia National Regional State in Ethiopia. Intensive field work was
conducted to collect data through focus group discussions, individual interviews and household
survey. Secondary data was obtained through desk reviews of literature and relevant
government documents from national to kebele levels. Qualitative and quantitative datasets
were integrated, used for mutual explanation and validation, and finding from each were
compared and interpreted. Food security measurement tools such as household Self-Assessment
Food Security (SAFS), Household Food (Insecurity) Access Scale (HFIAS), and Household
Food Balance Model (HFBM) were adopted in the analysis. Both descriptive statistics such as
frequency, mean, and standard deviation, and inferential statistics, binary logistic regression,
were used in the quantitative data analysis. Composite Asset Index (CAI) for each groups of
households were created by using Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA), and equality of
each groups of households in terms of their asset endowments and food security statuses were
analyzed.
The study revealed that most graduates had not done away from dependence on external
assistances after their graduation. The study shows that the target households were highly
vulnerable due to their demographic characteristics; limited access to productive assets such as
land and livestock; limited livelihood options and income sources; exposure to persistent
environmental risks such as drought, rainfall variability, crop pests and diseases. The services
and products from food security program were found inadequate to address households’
vulnerability and to replenish households’ capacity to graduate from the program as envisaged
in the program design. The analysis on food security status of graduated households revealed
that the great majority of them were not year-round food secure during the study. The study also
revealed that though the PSNP transfer significantly improved the food security status of
ongoing PSNP households as compared to their status before joining PSNP, their annual food
requirements were not fully met for most due to inadequacy of the transfer and exclusion of
eligible household members. Perception of most ongoing PSNP households on graduation
exercise was found gloomy. The shortcomings of previous graduation exercise which removed
eligible households prompted most ongoing PSNP households to build wrong conception of
graduation as an approach that leaves households in difficult circumstances by forcing them to
quit the program.
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The study concludes that households’ progress towards graduation has been constrained by
vulnerability factors related to households’ characteristics, economic, environmental and
institutional inefficiency that failed to adequately address these constraints as stipulated in the
program design. It argues that most graduated households were made to exit the program
without attaining food security and the capacity to withstand smaller shocks. Graduate
households’ asset endowment level and food security status was not different from that of the
ongoing PSNP households at the time this study was conducted.
Thus, the study suggests that the government should look at the mismatch between its intention
and implementation of graduation approach. Moreover, the study recommends that the success
of the PSNP program should be more rated by how much it has protected the vulnerable
households from being undernourished than by the number of households who exited it. The
developmental deepening of the program and its outcome, graduation, should be judged against
how other development interventions effectively complemented PSNP.
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Keywords
Vulnerability, livelihood assets, food security, MCA, CAI, graduation, HFIAS, SAFS, HFBM