USAID Office of Food for Peace Burkina Faso Bellmon ... - CiteSeerX

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household food deficit, the program has greater potential to provide food aid to households for
whom the food aid would not represent additional consumption. Initial geographic targeting of
areas with a greater proportion of food-deficit households will help avoid disruption of local
production and markets.
To provide additional geographic targeting guidance, this analysis uses two proxy indicators of
additionality, cereal poverty and chronic malnutrition of children under five years of age,
because these are the best available indicators of the relative absorptive capacity of food aid on
a sub-national basis in Burkina Faso. Relative to other regions, targeting the poorest
communities in the Center North, East, North, Central Plateau and Sahel regions for PM2A
rations would be most likely to represent additional consumption for PM2A-eligible households
and therefore least likely to pose any Bellmon concerns.
Strategic Use of Food Rations to Achieve Maximum Impact on Nutritional Outcomes
Individual PM2A rations must cover all pregnant or lactating mothers and children under two
years of age within a catchment area on a year-round basis, with the size and composition of
the individual ration designed to meet their special nutritional needs. Household rations,
however, should be designed with the objective of protecting the individual rations from
diversion or dilution and inducing program participation.
Potential awardees will need to conduct formative research to understand key health and
nutrition behaviors and current barriers to change in order to determine the appropriate size,
composition, beneficiary coverage and frequency of delivery of household rations. The
preventive approach that was successfully piloted in Haiti provided a household ration
composed of blended foods, pulses and oil to all households within the catchment area on a
year-round basis, regardless of household wealth status or food deficit. Future awardees may
consider different household ration designs depending on a variety of factors (e.g., community
needs, food preferences and logistics, etc.), which may lead to a more strategic use of
household rations, both in terms of household ration composition, size, and frequency and
timing of delivery. Two additional possible options for the provision of household rations are
explored in this report:
1. Target household rations to all PM2A-eligible households, regardless of household food
insecurity or wealth status, but limit distribution of household rations to the lean season
months
2. Target household rations year-round but only to the most food insecure households
Based on formative research, future awardees may consider these and other household ration
designs, any one of which will require ongoing monitoring and evaluation to ensure the
household ration is sufficient to ensure protection of individual rations while maintaining
acceptable levels of program participation.
The total magnitude of coverage is important from a Bellmon perspective because not only does
it translate into a volume of food aid commodities being introduced into a local area (and
therefore potentially affecting markets and incentives to produce), it hints at the non-food ration
BEST ANALYSIS – BURKINA FASO
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