Tag: Tufts

U.S. Food Aid (Part 8): Nawiri in Arid Lands of Kenya

July 24, 2026    This is the eighth Hunger Notes article about Food for Peace programs to help inform the public and USDA about lessons learned during past decades about the design and evolution of US food aid, intended to inform USDA which has an outstanding request for information.

Nawiri was the most recent Food for Peace program for Kenya, with about $200 million to different NGOs, led by two groups, Catholic Relief Services and Mercy Corps, covering drought-prone arid lands with mixed pastoral and agricultural economies.  The CRS consortium included Caritas, Tufts University, IBTCI, Concern, Village Enterprise and Kenyatta University and worked in Isiola and Marsabit counties, while Mercy Corps worked in Samburu and Turkana counties, with Research Triangle Institute, AVSI, Viamo, Caritas and the African Population and Health Research Center.  Together these teams  reached some 550,000 people.

Program metrics showed that Nawiri achieved substantial positive impacts but the benefits were often uneven, context-dependent, and constrained by severe environmental shocks.   The implementing agencies found that acute (wasting) malnutrition varies significantly between neighboring wards, across different seasons, and over time, meaning that generalized regional approaches are often ineffective.  Also, screening methods like mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) and weight-for-height z-scores (WHZ) behave differently across seasons, sex, and age groups.  Relying solely on MUAC can delay the identification of malnourished children; employing both metrics is necessary to accurately capture different characteristics and stages of malnutrition.  Not surprisingly, they found that dry climate correlated with worse malnutrition.

NGO evidence generally showed that where their interventions were concentrated, malnutrition measurably fell.   During the period of study, wasting malnutrition declined by over 20% in target areas, though it increased 40% in Turkana. Furthermore, longitudinal studies noted that stunting (long-term malnutrition) increased significantly over time for the sample as a whole, particularly in Laisamis.

Increased systematic screening and referral of malnourished children to health posts were an important reason for those declines seen in wasting.  In the  Turkana, Nawiri equipped 210 community health volunteers in 4 communities with dosage carts, pneumonia beads, and malaria test kits.  Concern piloted an integrated health intervention that added malaria, pneumonia and diarrhea case management with existing integrated-management of acute malnutrition.

Some 57 water systems were rehabilitated, important in a dry lands, and Nawiri fostered 35 local “Water Use Associations” for ongoing improvements for tanks, pipes and water points.  Crops were expanded with irrigation: sorghum, maize, watermelon, green grams, fodder. A 7 km canal was desilted.

“The primary pathway between water insecurity and malnutrition in the arid lands of Kenya is women’s time burden collecting water to meet the minimum drinking and hygiene needs of the household. Water collection is performed exclusively by women and girls and remains one of the pervasively gender inequitable elements of pastoral life. Nawiri aims to address the role of water system functionality through borehole rehabilitation.”

The project found that traditional pastoralist strategic mobility and social institutions (like sharing milk, food, and childcare) are the frontline of disaster response and foundational to community resilience.  Nawiri helped establish retail shops (dukas) in remote areas to stock better varieties of nutritious foods, bringing vibrant markets to communities that previously had to travel up to 7 kilometers for basic goods.  Nawiri promoted livestock health and livestock disease surveillance.

Applying the graduation model, some 500 households in 14 villages graduated with Village Enterprise assistance.  In The Isiolo pilot (600 households) launched 204 businesses and 20 savings groups; Food Consumption Score rose from 51.3% to 83.8% in 3.5 months and children (6–23 mo) meeting minimum acceptable diet rose from 6.38% to 31.65%.

The Double-Edged Sword of Diversification: While livelihood diversification provides alternative income, it can act as a maladaptive coping mechanism if it forces women into labor-intensive, low-return activities,. The program observed that as women spent more time on business activities, time spent on childcare decreased, which in some zones led to reduced breastfeeding and higher acute malnutrition.  While the drought pushed communities to diversify away from livestock, weak local economies meant many new businesses sold the same basic goods (like sugar and flour), fast-tracking local market saturation

Under CRS, 207 teenagers graduated the “Nawiri na Ujuzi” course (tailoring, masonry, plumbing, electrical, mechanics, driving), which was jointly funded by Nawiri and the County Government of Isiolo.  CRS Deputy COP Margaret Kahiga notes all beneficiaries come from households with under-five children facing malnutrition.  In a separate area, a randomized controlled tiral conducted with the Rural Entrepreneur Access Project (REAP) in Samburu revealed a limitation to these economic benefits:  if market saturation crossed a certain tipping point (over 60% enrollment in a specific locality), the income impact for individual businesses could reduce over time as businesses competed against one another

Resilience was highly dependent on informal safety nets, asset ownership, and access to savings.   The program emphasized layered, sequenced interventions (e.g., combining water with agriculture, nutrition education, and markets) and local ownership, leading to better resilience against shocks like drought. The partner county governments agreed to sustaining gains post-closeout, including asset handovers and policy integration. The NGOs also observed a chronic deficiency in prioritizing and budgeting of government resources for nutrition, and political leaders frequently lack awareness of the importance of multisectoral nutrition approaches.

Much of Nawiri intentionally focused on formative research and theory-of-change-analysis during the first two years.  The  Feinstein International Center at Tufts University managed a longitudinal study (bimonthly surveys) in four sentinel sites.  Tufts found that few individual/household variables predict malnutrition, whereas basic structural drivers (pastoralism under pressure, climate variability, weakening customary institutions) dominate.  Mercy Corps’ review of longitudinal data found that wasting malnutrition had persistently been above 15% for three decades, without improvement.

Notably, DOGE terminated the CRS program, despite positive progress and investments, because DOGE’s simplistic word search through the fun. ding agreement found politically-offensive words, like “gender”, and “climate.”  Because Nawiri was terminated early, a full, independent endline evaluation of final impact may be incomplete.

–  Contributed by WHES board member, Steven Hansch

 

 

Book Classic: The Challenge of Famine, Recent Experience and Lessons Learned by John Osgood Field

The anthology edited by John Osgood Field, The Challenge of Famine, Recent Experience Lessons Learned” remains one of the premier books about predicting and measuring famine ever published.  Field, until his retirement a professor of food studies at Tufts University School of Nutrition, published this in 1993 with Kumarian Press, arrayed a dozen key scholars of famine who including Joel Charney, Mary Anderson, Dirk Stryker, Peter Cutler, Jack Shepard and others.  Field wrote the introduction, the first chapter, and the final summary chapter.  The book is as appropriate to read today as when it was published as it hones in on the ambiguity of when to say that there is a famine.

Field writes that when in full bloom, famine is dramatically clear to the naked eye.  However, he writes, how to recognize famine before it becomes obvious is the dilemma around which much of the book revolves. This is relevant at a time when there are hot debates over which parts of Sudan may or may not be in famine, which parts of Gaza may or may not be in famine with data sets pointing in different directions as to the answer.

Field clarifies that famine is a slow onset disaster, which does not happen suddenly, but has a lengthy gestation. He makes the key point that notwithstanding the complexity of famine and the multiple factors underlying it, the principal indicators are few and manageable. In other words, famine may be caused by different processes, but there are fewer cases, but the data for recognizing famine are fewer. The dilemma facing early warning is that it is very difficult, perhaps impossible to be definitive, clear and compelling about something that does not yet exist. Ambiguity is inherent in famine prediction.

This means that political decision making will come into play. Early warning does not eliminate the role of politics. Both political early warning and administrative early warning have better track records in inducing early decision making and response than early warning systems that are purely technical.

Writing about the famine codes in India, Field dissects detection and response with responsibility of the same individuals who typically were district level officials.

Contributor William Torrey reflects on community famine surveillance in Sudan, which is very timely in 2025.  Torrey dives into Darfur, including about participation by locals in Al-Fasher who were also involved in relief work, early warning, and famine response.

In his chapter about Oxfam America’s disaster response, Joel Charney mentions that honest reflection and self-evaluation are not exactly hallmarks of the voluntary agency community.  “According to their own public relations pieces, it seems that the agencies always do well regardless of the grave mistakes in judgment that journalists and other independent investigators continually uncover.”  He reviews the 1978 famine in Cambodia.

Mary B. Anderson and Peter Woodrow draw on their extensive case studies of disasters in many countries for key lessons, such as how disaster victims have important capacities which are not destroyed in disaster and therefore should be built on.  They argue that outside aid to these victims must be provided in ways that recognize and support these capacities.

In his chapter, Jack Shepard summarizes his research into American assistance to Ethiopia during the 1981-1985 famine period.  He recounts hos U.S. food aid became an important part of foreign policy in the 1970s and 1980s at a time of increasing American food production and increasing malnutrition around the world.  Shepherd recounts the evolution of aid policies including destabilizing Marxist regimes.  “Nowhere is the Reagan policy more clear than in its treatment of Catholic Relief Services (CRS), the official relief and development agency of the American Roman Catholic Community.  From 1982 through 1984 the administration deliberately delayed its response to emergency food aid requests for Ethiopia by CRS.”  In time, US food aid ramped up largely cross-border through Sudan into Tigray and Eritrea (fighting against the government of Ethiopia).

The most distinctive chapter was by Peter Cutler:  “Responses to Famine and Why They Are Allowed to Happen.”   Among Cutler’s observations is that rural famine victims are likely to become a political issue only if their case is taken up by influential urban elites, such as university students or the press.  He catalogs various contradictions in our aid system.

For instance, NGOs are in a contradictory position with regard to famine control.  On the one hand, their field staff are among the best informed of all actors operating in a famine zone, yet at the same time they are the least likely to challenge the system or influence governments. This is because NGOs are highly vulnerable. Cutler concludes the professional relief and development agencies will avoid the risks of challenging donors and the host governments when famine breaks out among unpopular groups of victims.

Publisher:  Kumarian Press, West Hartford Connecticut.  ISBN:  1-56549-019-3

In Memoriam: US Famine Early Warning System (FEWS), and SERVIR

March 19, 2026    The program which many experts considered to be the most effective at stopping famines and starvation and arguably the single most valuable aid program of all time, has ended its 40 year run of success, as the White House shut it down, alongside hundreds of other global initiatives, without review, discussion or debate.  The “Famine Early Warning System” aka “FEWS” was created to address the longstanding problem that U.S. food aid, which takes months to plan, procure and ship across oceans, kept arriving too late to save lives where there was famine.

FEWS has prevented the deaths of an estimated 10 million children from famine during its tenure.  FEWS played an important role in the decline in famine deaths seen in the last century.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) created FEWS following the late famine relief efforts of the mid 1980s when famine hit Ethiopia, Sudan and the Sahel.  In those famines, US food aid saved many lives, but could have saved more, and prevented mass forced migration (the uprooting of refugees) if food aid had reached those in need at earlier stages of crisis.  The President of Tufts University (in Massachusetts), Dr. Jean Mayer, a nutritionist, proposed a new famine early warning initiative to the head of USAID at the time, and the new program was born.  In the decades since, US food aid became dramatically more effective at addressing emergency food needs in a timely way, in the process saving millions of lives.

From its inception, FEWS cleverly combined data from a range of different sources about local crop production in countries from Somalia to Mali, from Afghanistan to Haiti.  FEWS obtained and compared data from satellite imagery of fields under cultivation, ground visitations, rainfall, local retail prices, surveys of malnutrition, and distress sales by households (an early indicator of intention to migrate).  Its methods elegantly blended insights from markets, biology, climate, and remote sensing.  FEWS brought together contributions from other parts of the government:  including NASA, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), NOAA, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.  Various universities including the University of California/Santa Barbara and the University of Maryland also provided critical satellite monitoring and analysis, all under USAID management, backed by networks of field analysts and scientists.  The first American group leading FEWS was Tulane University School of Tropical Medicine.

Graduate courses in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) taught about FEWS as a case study of a successful application of layering information in multi-colored maps to target food aid where it was needed most.  Courses in schools of public health taught about FEWS as well.  Humanitarian aid became a science.

USAID renamed the program “FEWS NET” and funded it to avoid appearance of conflict of interest to inflate food needs through funding appeals.  The cost of FEWS NET has been a small fraction of the value of the humanitarian food aid that USAID distributes. As FEWS matured and became a global network, FEWS NET, it provided ongoing, real-time reporting about a several dozen countries spanning continents and became a mainstay of USAID, being renewed continuously.  FEWS provided guidance not only to US food aid, but food from other donor countries including Canada, Japan, Europe and Australia.  To emphasize this collaboration with other contributing nations, in 2000, the initiative was renamed to Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) to emphasize the importance of collaboration with international and local information systems.

FEWS NET integrated varied data to build the most-likely scenarios to project food insecurity conditions in designated countries four and eight months in advance, indicating where timely humanitarian food aid might save lives and livelihoods.  FEWS NET’s analysis have answered the who, what, where, when and why. FEWS NET also reviews livestock conditions, markets and herder mobility (and fisheries, where important), along with crop conditions.  In recent decades, conflict became the biggest driver of food insecurity due to broken market links, shrinking livelihood options, death or injury of main breadwinners, and population displacement, leading to aid dependence.

No other public source has provided this kind of independent and globally consistent food insecurity intelligence.  FEWS NET briefings to all branches of the US Government, UN and NGO community are well respected and eagerly sought.  FEWS NET also reviewed livestock conditions, markets and herder mobility (and fisheries, where important), along with crop conditions.  In recent decades, conflict became the biggest driver of food insecurity due to broken market links, shrinking livelihood options, death or injury of main breadwinners, and population displacement, leading to aid dependence.

Famines will continue to occur, but prevention and early mitigation and response will be hampered now in the absence of FEWS.

In addition to the termination of FEWS, the USG also terminated other early warning projects, such as SERVIR.  The SERVIR program was a joint initiative of NASA and USAID that leveraged satellite-based Earth observation data to support climate resilience, disaster preparedness, and prevention in poorer countries. Established in 2005, SERVIR’s mission is to “connect space to village,” making NASA’s Earth data accessible for locally-driven environmental and development solutions. SERVIR tracked food security, water resources, weather, land use, and natural hazards.  SERVIR partnered with regional organizations in Amazonia, Eastern and Southern Africa, Hindu Kush Himalaya, Mekong, West Africa, and Central America.

Other sources about the demise of FEWS:   New Humanitarian about Data Streams;  and National Public Radio’s piece.

About Servir, see:     https://nasawatch.com/trumpspace/usaid-erasure-impact-nasa-halts-servir-solicitations/ https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20210022715/downloads/Anderson2021_Getting-ahead-of-disaster-impacts-EO-CB_20211015.pdf