Enabling Development and 'Transition' among Food-Supported Producers in Ethiopia: A Comparative Case Study

<p>Ethiopia is synonymous with protracted drought, natural resource degradation, and hunger and impoverished livelihoods among many millions of farm-based producers. Since 1971, the Government of Ethiopia and foreign donors have channelled food aid and administrative and extension support to relief and rehabilitation projects for improved natural resource management. One such intervention is MERET-PLUS (Managing Environmental Resources to Enable Transition to more sustainable livelihoods through Partnership and Land User Solidarity), a long-standing, watershed-based food-for-assets development project. In its latest form, MERET-PLUS like many similar 'new generation' food-funded natural resource management interventions has multiple positive impacts, both for targeted watershed areas, and for the inhabitants of these areas. In spite of this, successfully enabling 'transition' of participants from receiving food aid remains highly problematic. Transition has not received sufficient attention in programming or - until recently - in academic literature. Partly for this reason, such interventions often lack an agreed, coherent definition of transition, a strategy for achieving such transition, and a means of measuring progress toward transition. Recognising potential for transition to advance policy and practice for such projects, I critically evaluate transition as an inherent objective of the current phase of MERET-PLUS, through the positional lens of my internship with a major donor to the project, the World Food Programme (WFP). I use four case study woredas as talking points, and use quantitative and qualitative information gathered from extensive research from site- through to federallevel. I wish to answer two research questions about transition through this research. Firstly: to what extent has 'enabling transition' in MERET-PLUS been developed as a concept, in policy or strategy, and as an understood and measurable concept? And secondly: what place does transition have in the MERETPLUS project? In relation to the first question, this research presents four main findings. Firstly, formal strategy for transitioning MERET-PLUS beneficiaries from project support has been formed only after thirty years of continuous food support. In many ways, this reflects the legacy of continued difficulties in linking relief, rehabilitation and development - and of achieving real development and independent capacities to sustain this development - through food-supported programming. Secondly, there are currently diverse interests in transition across all levels of the MERET-PLUS project, which must be factored-in to any strategy for implementation. In sub-federal government offices for example, strategy for transition is formed by observing the particular contexts of particular successful sites within their area. By contrast, at federal level, in the WFP Country Office, strategy for transition tends to be formed as part of instrumental programming goals. Thirdly, two particular components of MERET-PLUS make it difficult to conceive of transition as inherent in programming, or as an instrument introduced from higher levels. First, the integrated nature of MERET-PLUS, with a wide range of activities for land and water-source rehabilitation and human livelihood improvement, makes it difficult to conceive of one, integrated strategy for transition. Second, the holistic, participatory approaches to targeting project assistance and planning project activities make instrumental approaches to transition inappropriate. 'Transition as inherent' and 'transition as instrumental' approaches represent unrealised potential for scalable improvements of project impacts, coupled with the challenge of building the kind of concerted confidence required among beneficiaries, planners, leaders and government agencies. Fourthly and finally, information from project beneficiaries, planning teams, and project managers at higher levels has highlighted the importance of asset-based measures of communities' and households' livelihoods in assessing readiness for transition. Communication and planning for transition with engaged beneficiaries remains an important challenge, and one which has not been sufficiently understood in the literature. The goal of 'enabling transition' in MERET-PLUS is as yet unrealised in practice and at scale. A number of factors indicate real potential for transition in case study areas, including income generation from collective farm-based activities, and more broadly, confidence and belief among beneficiaries in improving their livelihoods through available project activities. As a snapshot of potential to 'enable transition', this research contributes practice-based insights for progressively phasing out "outsiders" assistance to vulnerable communities.</p>