Reconciling food-for-work project feasibility with food aid targeting in Tigray, Ethiopia

Food-for-work (FFW) projects face the challenge of addressing three kinds o f objectives: to feed hungry people, to build public works where needed, an d to be feasible for prompt project implementation. In the debate over how to target FFW to the poorest of the poor, the last two program objectives a re often overlooked. This research examines FFW afforestation and erosion-c ontrol programs in central Tigray, Ethiopia, during 1992-95 in order to und erstand how these sometimes conflicting objectives were reconciled. Statist ical analyses examined the factors that influenced (1) in which villages FF W projects were located, (2) which households were deemed eligible to parti cipate in FFW (in those villages having FFW projects), and (3) which eligib le households elected to participate, and (4) how much time the participati ng households dedicated to FFW activities. Project feasibility outweighed the needs for food security or natural resou rce conservation in influencing whether an FEW project would be located in one of the 25 villages surveyed. In villages where FFW was available, anti- poverty targeting appears to be taking place, since smaller households with less land were more likely to be eligible to participate in FFW projects. But although the poor were likely to be eligible for FFW, some non-poor hou seholds were also eligible, which suggests that anti-poverty targeting was not efficient. Among households eligible for FFW, those that were relativel y better off (larger families that did not lease out land) tended to partic ipate and supply more days of FFW labor than the poorest households. The on ly households eligible for FFW which did not participate were headed mostly by elderly women and hence unable (rather than unwilling) to participate. Overall, anti-poverty targeting was sub-optimal but reasonable, considering that these resource conservation projects need to be located where labor a nd materials could be made available. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All ri ghts reserved.