External Food Aid Interventions for Improved Food Security

Description

Food aid programmes are a welcome relief to communities in distress especially those in arid and semi-arid parts of the world in addressing food insecurity. These programmes need impact evaluations so as to guide the management on current activities, to inform resource allocation decisions across program components and to support the design or re-design of future interventions to maximize their potential impacts. The outcome of such studies reduces the information gap and provides vital information that can be used by policy makers in reducing or eliminating dependency on food aid. Marigat Sub-County in Kenya’s Rift valley floor experiences food insecurity and has been used as a case study in this book. This book addresses the need for impact evaluation of external food aid interventions to come up with alternative interventions aimed at maximizing potential positive impacts on food security. It focuses on the types and activities of external food aid intervention agencies and assesses the impacts of external food aid interventions on household food security in the case study area. The book also evaluates the community perception of food aid intervention in its effort to improve household food security in the case study area and suggests alternative household food security intervention strategies that can be employed by external food aid agencies towards sustainable household food security. The book is invaluable and is recommended to all individuals, research institutions, aid organizations and government agencies involved and interested in addressing food insecurity concerns in arid and semi-arid areas in Kenya and other parts of the world. The writer expects that the results of the study can be replicated in other parts of the world to improve food security.

Dr. Christopher Kipkoech Saina is a lecturer in the School of Environmental Studies, University of Eldoret. He holds a PhD and M.Phil in Environmental Studies (Human Ecology) from University of Eldoret. He has previously taught in high schools (Geography and Economics) for over ten years and served as a tutorial fellow in Moi University for two years. He is the author of Drought and Famine Coping Strategies; A Study of the Keiyo People in Kerio Valley, Kenya, a co-author of Climate Change and Food Security and has published over fifteen articles in refereed journals. He has been actively involved in outreach activities, and has been a long-serving patron of university student’s environmental association, coordinating university environmental impact assessment training and campaigning against drug and alcohol abuse in the university. He is a member of several boards of secondary schools, vice chair of an environmental conservation group in Elgeyo Marakwet County, a NEMA EIA lead expert and has been actively involved in the formation of North Rift Regional Centre For Education for Sustainable Development.