"One Bad Silver Bullet": Examining Title II Emergency Food Aid in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

The prevalence of acute food insecurity, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, has contributed to a rising level of global hunger since 2014, despite several prior decades of decline in hunger. Yet, while this urgent hunger is overwhelmingly served by American food aid through USAID’s Title II programming, the programs that underlie this system have not undergone significant reform, despite repeated efforts to affect such a change. Previous reform efforts have focused on the modalities of emergency food aid, including cash-based aid, local and regional procurement, and the shipping of food goods. However, prior reform attempts fail to heed all of the warnings of the food crises that have unfolded in the 21st century and the changing landscape of acute hunger, driven by extreme weather changes and conflict. This work uses both expert interviews and a series of case studies from subSaharan Africa, specifically the 2007 floods in Zambia, the 2005 food crisis in Niger, and the 2011 famine in Somalia, under the framework of classification of humanitarian crises to investigate the necessity of reform. In addition to the transformation of Title II to create a more flexible and responsive emergency food aid system, the case studies suggest re-evaluation of our systems of early warning with an emphasis on the depoliticization of catastrophe, framework creation for conflictdriven food crises where humanitarian workers may face violence, and renewed focus on the expansion of Title II and integration of this program alongside its counterpart program, the Emergency Food Security Program.