PAPERS

From drought relief to post- disaster recovery: The case of Botswana

Richard Morgan*

Department of Agricultural Economics Michigan State University U.S.A.

This article discussea the initiative of the Government of Botswana in formulating and introducing a programme to assist recovery in rural areas after the present drought period as an important aspect of the national development effort. It examines the process by which this Post Drought Recovery Programme was arrived at, its Mtations, the extent of its appropriateness to longer-term factors which render rural households more vulnerable to drought, and suggests conclusions which may be drawn to inform the design of similar programmes elsewhere.

Keywords: Natare) disasters; Drought; Famine; Africa; Botswana; Disaster Food Programme; Disaster recovery; Rehabilitation.

INTRODUCTION

With the easing of the most immediate effects of the drought-related emergencies of the early 1980s in a number of African countries, considerable attention has begun to be focussed on the design of appropriate measures to support “post-drought recovery.” The impetus for the institution of such measures appears to have come largely from a number of donor agencies, particularly in the multi-lateral and non-government sectors. Less attention has been given to ways in which African Governments themselves have adopted, or might be encouraged to adopt, Post Drought Recovery Programmes (PDRPs) as central elements of their rural development strategies, national plans and budgets. This article examines and evaluates the case of Botswana, where a PDRP has, largely on the Government’s own initiative, been adopted as a prominent part of national policy. and has begun to be tested in areas of the country emerging from prolonged drought conditions.

National Food Strategy Co-ordinator in Botswana from 1983 to 1985. This article is written in the author’s private capacity.

*

DROUGHT AND DROUGHT RELIEF IN BOTSWANA

If the consequences of the four-year (1982-1985) countrywide drought in Botswana have been less severe for human life than those in other parts of Africa, this is attributable largely to the effectiveness of relief measures rather than to any lack of severity in the consequences of the drought itself. With rainfall deficits of typically 25-40% below long term norms occurring throughout this period, and poor time distribution of precipitation for the purposes of arable farming, foodcrop production fell to under 20,000 tonnes per year, or 14,000 tonnes on average for the four years, compared to previous levels of 5 O , ~ , o o O tonnes. These falls in production caused severe losses of income and seasonal employment for poorer farming households. In addition, total nunbers of cattle fell from an estimated 2.97 million at the start oi the drought to roughly 2.35 million by the end of 1985. It is notable that these losses were concentrated most heavily amongst the smaller herds within an already highly imbalanced distribution of cattleholding: rates of mortality, sales and home slaughter (the last two often occurring as last resort measures as cattle weaken) have been considerably higher than average in herds of up to forty animals (considered to be a “minimum economically viable size” by some observers), and even more so amongst herds of up to twenty herd, about the minimum size from which sufficient numbers of draft oxen can usually be drawn (see Table 1).

This trend, also apparent in the 1982-1983 statistics, relates particularly to the reliance of small herd owners, who lack the resources to acquire their own borehole systems, on overused communal water sources. It has not only reduced the income-earning assets of poorer households dispro- portionately (and their access to other benefits, notably milk), but has seriously damaged their future production prospects, by decimating their major source of draft power for ploughing (hand-tilling is rare in Botswana). To illustrate this, the Agricultural Statistics series also shows a decrease in the estimated number of households owning the draft power they employed from 30,600 in 1982 to 25,500 in 1984. It can also be noted in this context that the great majority of Botswana’s 70,000430,000 farming households are engaged in both arable and livestock activities, and that many of them depend also on seasonal employment (e.g. weeding, brewing of sorghum beer) and the gathering of wild foods or small game hunting, all of which have been adversely affected by the drought. Indeed, the only sector of the rural economy that has shown some expansion has been smallstock-raising 6.e. goats, sheep, chickens), which has served as an important buffer against income losses for at least some families.

Despite these overwhelmingly negative effects, an extensive relief programme, built up gradually since 1982 as the effects of drought worsened, has succeeded in forestalling severe declines in rural food intake, in household incomes, in water availability and in access to basic agricultural inputs. With the greatly expanded distribution of supplementary foodstuffs to schoolchildren,

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POST-DROUGHT RECOVERY IN BOTSWANA 31

Table 1. Ratio of deaths, sales and home slaughter to total cattle in 1984 by size of cattle holding, compared to national

average in the “traditional” sector

Herd size Deaths: Sales: Home slaughter: total cattle total total

1-20 65.0 13.0 5.1 1 1-20 42.7 8.0 4.2 21-30 32.4 9.5 2.2 3 1 4 0 21.3 7.6 3.3 All cattle 19.3 7.3 1.7 (Traditional sector)

Source: 1984 Botswana Agricultural Statistics, Ministry

Eighty-six per cent of all cattle; excludes fenced/freehold of Agriculture/ Ministry of Finance, Gaborone, Botswana.

farms.

“vulnerable groups” (pre-school children, expectant and lactating women, tuberculosis patients), remote area populations and destitutes, overall intake of basic cereals has probably increased during the drought. Rates of malnutrition among pre-school children as shown by the extensive national surveillance system rose from around 24% in the years prior to the drought to some 30% in 1983; since that time they have stabilized and in 1985 began to decline in most regions. Supplementing the largely donor- supplied food programmes, the Government itself has since 1983 devoted 13--LUu!o of its capital spending to various forms of relief. These have included community-based public works measures offering cash payments for temporary work on village impovement projects, which, employing some 50,000-70,000 rural people during each year, have replaced an estimated 35% of the value of crops lost due to drought in 1984 and 1985. This “cash-for-work” system has proved extremely flexible and well-adapted to Botswana’s circumstances, the rural economy being highly monetized and well served by consumer good trading outlets; some useful infrastructure has been created in the process. In addition, despite successive harvest failures, farmers have been encouraged and assisted to continue ploughing by a range of largely Government-funded subsidies: cash grants for the clearing of fields in preparation for ploughing, subsidization at the rate of 85% of the hiring draft power (usually tractors) from private farmers by those lacking ploughing resources, and provision of free seed packages (sorghum and maize). By 1984-1985, these schemes were reaching about 25% of farming households in the case of land clearance grants and draft power subsidies, and virtually all households for seed distribution: they were all designed to cover a 3 ha arable unit (about the average area ploughed in a normal year).

This heavy public sector support of arable farming appears to have been successful in retaining the bulk of the peasantry’s involvement in the sector, and in avoiding rapid increases in an already high rate of rural-to-urban

migration, and otherwise likely outcome of prolonged drought. Although the percentage of planting households who actually got any harvest at all was below 42% of each of the three seasons after 1981, and average yields per hectare fell by 70% compared with that year, the average number of households planting in the 1982-1984 period was as high as 78% of that in the 1980-1981 period (Table 2). This indicates positive results for the unstated intentioc behind these elements of the relief effort to “keep people in touch with the land” during the drought, and the country has avoided a more-than-temporary displacement of substantial numbers of adults from the rural areas, which urban employment opportunities would have been unable to absorb. More than that, farmers have remained in a position, albeit with greatly increased reliance on Govern- ment assistance, to take advantage of such rains as did eventually come. This was evidenced by a partial recovery of crop production in the north-east of the country in 1985, where good sorghum and millet crops were achieved by farmers over a fairly wide area, and some 20,000 tonnes were produced nationally.

EVOLUTION OF A POST DROUGHT RECOVERY PROGRAMME

Serious thought at the higher levels of the Botswana Government began to be given to the concept of a Post Drought Recovery Programme (PDRP) in 1984, when it had become apparent that the effects of the drought were likely to outlast the immediate drought period itself. Not only was more time available for policy formulation in this area once the relief effort had been reasonably successfully instituted, but also in late 1983 work was begun on the design of a medium term National Food Strategy (NFS). A high-level Working Group reporting to a Committee chaired by the Vice President was established to formulate the NFS. When the Group presented the outlines of the proposed Strategy in 1984, one of its central aims was taken as the achievement of a broadbased recovery in arable production following the ending of the drought, i.e. one that would encompass the majority of farmers. A further aim was the rapid increase of overall food production particularly through the expansion of the currently very small irrigated and “commercial” farming sector. In attempting to balance these objectives, the NFS saw the need to increase levels of self-sufficiency at both the national and the household level through a range of assistance programmes, thereby achieving related goals: on the one hand, an improvement in national food security (in a situation where some 90% of basic foods are imported from or through South Africa), and, on the other, rapid reductions in and eventual elimination of malnutrition.

The NFS was formally adopted by the Cabinet and Parliament in late 1985 (Report, 1985; National Food Strategy, 1985) and contained a commitment to the adoption of a PDRP. This is also a prominent feature of the general strategy for rural development contained in the Sixth National Development Plan (198.9, covering the period 1985-1991. Beyond the rhetorical level, specific

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32 POST-DROUGHT RECOVERY IN BOTSWANA

Table 2. Various statistics on the arable farming sector in Botswana

1981 1982 1983 1984

Households planting

Households harvesting

H.H. harvesting as % of

Crop production (per thousand m/ tonnes) 54,3 17.2 14.4 7.3

Income from crops per planting household

(per thousand) 68.7 57.0 48.2 51.2

(per thousand) 57.5 23.4 11.2 19.0

H.H. planting 84% 41% 23% 37%

(Pula) 275 141 85 39 ~~

Sources: Agricultural Statistics, 1981-1984; author’s estimates.

One Pula was in 1985 equivalent to about U.S.$O.5; this exchange rate however understated the “true” value of the Pula, which was worth U.S.W.7 or more before the collapse of the Rand.

budgetary commitments have been made for the PDRP, for example in the very high rate of recurrent finance spending growth allocated to the Department of Food Resources, which co-ordinates both the supplementary feeding programmes and the labour-based public works projects (a comprehensive description of which is given in Borton (1984)). In addition, approval was given in late 1985 for a large amount of supplementary finance for an “Accelerated Rainfed Arable Programme” (ARAP) which will, over a five year period, extend many of the support measures for crop farming introduced under the drought relief effort, This degree of institutionalition of both relief and recovery measures within national planning and internal budgetting, on the initiative of the Government itself, reflects a recognition that the circumstances of drought are not unusual or a “once-off’ factor in Botswana’s environment, semi-arid and based on marginal soils as it is; what this article goes on to question is the extent to which it indicates an intention to deal with the ways in which seasonal rainfall shortages interact with longer-term factors inducing or reinforcing poverty.

CONTENT OF THE PDRP

With the institutional machinery for the co-ordination and delivery of a range of relief programmes in place, particularly in the form of a national (“Interministerial”) Drought Committee (Ih4DC) supported by a number of equivalent committees at district level, the PDRP as envisaged by the NFS is composed largely of the more appropriate elements of the relief effort itself. The idea is

that measures should be continued on a scale tailored to the rate of recovery in each geographical area, and in the rural sector as a whole, for several seasons. Recovery efforts would be overseen and their impact monitored by the existing relief committees, and implemented by the Departments currently responsible for relief measures. Indicators of the rate of recovery, including rainfall, malnutrition levels, cattle condition and crop production, would be monitored by the Early Warning System (attached to the IMDC, and described in Morgan (1985), with recommendations made to the political authorities on resource requirements for recovery purposes in the same way as has been done in the previous few years for relief.

The major modification of the relief programme during the recovery phase will be a considerable reduction in the categories and numbers of people eligible for supplementary food rations, carried out through the use of medical selection criteria among the “vulnerable groups” at health facilities. Other, more directly “production-oriented” aspects of current programmes are to be retained. Notable among these are the labour-based public works, especially those with potential benefits to the agricultural sector (such as small dam construction and firebreaks), and arable farming support measures including draft power hiring subsidies, land clearance grants and seed distribution. These farming-related measures have been largely incor- porated within the “ARAP” mentioned above, and this in turn has introduced new elements, such as fertilizer distribution and programmes for the protection of field crops against pest and bird damage. Longer standing arrangements exist to make basic farming equipment such as ploughs, planters, harrows, fencing materials, as well as small teams of draft animals, available to farmers on highly concessionary terms (under the Arable Lands Development Programme, “ALDEP”).

Through this shift of emphasis from the relief-oriented aspects of current programmes to those more directly related to production, the Government hopes to realise a subsidiary objective: that of reducing possible dependence on the relief measures themselves as production increases. Concern over this issue has been voiced in particular by international agencies, in a context where some 58% of the country’s total population has been benefitting from supplementary rations, mainly supplied from overseas. Such concern is perhaps counterbalanced by the persistence of rural households in committing labour time and material resources to ploughing each year in the face of repeated harvest failures. However, it is also a concern that a substantial minority of households and individuals will have to face permanently disabling effects due. to the long prolonged drought: hence the PDRP also includes provision for the reinforcing of presently inadequate programmes for local government assistance (through a monthly allowance) to destitutes, and for the rehabilitation of malnourished children through on-site feeding at health facilities. In 1985, the local Councils were able to assist less than 9,000 perma- nently registered destitutes, whilst an additional 30,000 people were registered as temporarily destitute for the purposes of relief assistance. When the PDRP began to be

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POST-DROUGHT RECOVERY IN BOTSWANA 33

tested in the limited areas of the country which showed clear indications of improved conditions (these contained about 15% of the rural population in 19851, the major difficulty experienced was not in the introduction of medical selection for food rationing at clinics among mothers and children, but rather in the lack of provision made for temporary “drought- affected” destitutes who were expected to be able to fend for themselves once drought conditions had eased. The local Councils, which undertake the screening of applicants for destitute status, found themselves unable to “drop” many of those expected to need only temporary help. This led to a hasty review of the limited provisions within the national budget for the permanent assistance programme for destitutes, in order that more of the temporarily registered could be afforded permanent status. As a complementary measure, District Drought Committees were asked to give those temporary destitutes able to work priority in the allocation of places on labour-based public works projects. A further indicator of the underlying nature of these problems of destitution and poverty is that the assistance programmes for the destitute and for the malnourished children have also been extended to urban areas, although the primary effects of the drought have occurred rather in the countryside.

A final aspect of the PDRP is the recognition of a potentially important link between the existing seasonal input and rural income support measures and investment in types of research which may lead to not merely a regaining of former levels of productivity in arable farming but to increases on smallholdings beyond these levels (which even in “good” seasons were always below those adequate to meet household food needs). The major research efforts underway are those concerning farming systems and the improvement through breeding of local varieties of the more drought-tolerant crops, e.g. sorghum and millet. The greater emphasis given to these efforts by the Government and donors has gone together with recently successful moves to secure the production of suffkient quantities of indigenous seed varieties within the country, through a network of local seedgrowers and by using part of the limited land under irrigation for this purpose.

LIMITATIONS OF THE PRESENT PDRP

An overview of the content of Botswana’s PDRP, as presently conceived, suggests that it is likely to lead to a more equitable distribution of immediate incomes and public sector benefits among rural dwellers, but may do little to address the underlying inadequacies of access to productive assets faced by most small farmers, and, more generally, the fragile basis of rural production systems in the context of long term social and ecological change (see Bush, 1985). The PDRP, in according closely with current political realities in Botswana, addresses only peripherally the nature as distinct from the extent of the poverty problem. Its most successful outcome is thus likely to be continued alleviation rather than transformation of this problem (see the example of the treatment of destitution above); a very similar situation is faced by non-livestock-

owning “remote area dwellers” who benefit from relief food.

Issues which have not been placed on the agenda in the process of policy formulation for the PDRP include the unequal distribution of cattle ownership and hence draft power access, itself substantially worsened by the present drought; serious overstocking and range degradation, particularly around seasonal water sources on which owners of smaller herds usually rely; and the largely unrestricted exploitation of groundwater resources in the KaIahari by a small number of livestock owners in a position to raise finance for borehole drilling. Continuous expansion of the areas under grazing for over two decades has exerted pressure on the resource bases of predominantly non- pastoral producers, i.e. those reliant on the more marginal activities of hunting, gathering and arable farming.

The factors which have ensured the prominence of the PDRP in national policy also shed light on the reasons for the limitations of its longer-term perspective. First, as indicated already, external (in)security factors arising from the prolonged struggle against the apartheid regime within and beyond South Africa have brought the Botswana Government to face the possibility of future food shortages very seriously. It has responded by seeking ways to insure the country against a possible combination of drought and external trade disruptions. The second major factor is the mainly rural power base of the democratically elected Government, for which the extensive drought relief programme was a persuasive vote-winner in the 1984 national elections. The desire to secure this rural support in the face of growing popularity for the major opposition party among the much smaller urban electorate creates a climate for continued subsidies to farmers, and a willingness to use surplus state revenues for this purpose. Such programmes also tend to have the effect of reducing urban migration rates, increases in which are likely to have adverse socio-economic consequences as well as leading to greater dissatisfaction in the towns. The Government has been able to respond to these pressures by mobilizing considerable donor support (e.g. for food aid, of which Botswana is about the largest per capita recipient in Africa) as well as by using its strong revenue and financial reserve position. The new “ARAP” in particular was initiated by the ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) as a priority programme. Despite its high cost (Pula 29 million over 5 years), the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, which normally exercises strong control over the planning and resource allocation process, was permitted little influence over its design, scope or speed of introduction. Whilst this has almost certainly led to deficiencies in technical design and in provisions for its implementation, the ARAP does indicate the importance attached by the BDP of demonstrating in concrete terms its commitment to the arable farming sector in which the bulk of its constituents are engaged - despite the uncertain returns to such investments in purely economic terms. Members of the ruling party and their prominent supporters at village level are also among those to benefit from relief or recovery measures targetted primarily to the poor: spinoffs include

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34 POST-DROUGHT RECOVERY IN BOTSWANA

the income to the small number of tractor owners of the draft power hiring subsidies (less than 3,000 tractors are owned in the country, whilst payments under the scheme to owners are currently running at over Pula 1.5 million per year). Other benefits of such measures to the rural elite include contracts for haulage of food supplies and for the grading of roads previously cleared by hand under the public works schemes.

These interests on the other hand inhibit the consider- ation of structural problems facing the poor, particularly that of draft power ownership as distinct from temporary state-subsidized access. Neglect of this issue, as well as the hitherto tentative nature of attempts to address environ- mental degradation and speculative use of groundwater resources associated with the expansion of commercial livestock farming (consequences which have little to do with “drought”), is explicable by the determination of rural wealth and social status almost solely by cattleholding, together with the extensive overlap between the larger herdowners and the bureaucratic and political elite. In effect, the PDRP is limited to those areas where the interests of these groups and those (apparently) of the rural poor coincide or are compatible; fortunately, these areas are currently substantial.

CONCLUSION

Experience of planning for post-drought recovery in Botswana indicates that, in circumstances of perceived pressure from rural public opinion in a democratic context, and of adequate financial resources, an internally-designed recovery programme can be introduced as a prominant feature of national policy. In the absence of these or similar factors, it is likely that encouragement and material assistance from outside agencies to countries emerging from drought would be important in achieving this outcome. Botswana’s example also suggests that it may prove easier to evolve a PDRP from a broad-based, functional relief effort, based as far as possible on local institutions and resource commitments, than to start from scratch in these respects.

On the other hand, despite the positive aspects of the PDRP discussed here in terms of channelling reources for the support of small farmers and rural incomes, and for the promotion of small-farm-related research, it is clear that recovery measures, to be more than a stop-gap, must address underlying factors which render the rural poor both economically and ecologically vulnerable to the effects of

rainfall deficiencies. It is such broader apsects of the recovery process that may be most appropriately promoted and assisted by agencies operating in the international or non-government sectors. In the specific case of Botswana, these factors inducing vulnerability include the unequal ownership of cattle, widespread tendency to over-stocking, the encroachment of the commercial beef-producing sector on the resource base of other production forms, and very low productivity on most smallholdings even under “good” rainfall conditions. Graphic indicators of chronic poverty persist in the existence of mild forms of malnutrition amongst some 20% of the nation’s young children, the not uncommon and growing incidence of socially-recognized destitution among adults, and high rates of tubercular illness. These circumstances argue for the inclusion in the PDR concept of not only the already-accepted welfare, income- and production-support measures, but also a broader range of programmes for longer-term objectives, these would include the widening of draft power ownership, intensification of adaptive research on small herd and small farm production systems, and rationalization of the use of scarce and limited water and pasture resources, in order both to “drought-proof’ and to transform the rural economy.

REFERENCES

Borton J., Disaster Preparedness and Response in Botswana. Relief and Development Institute, London (December 1984).

Bush R., Drought and famines, in: War and Famine, Review of Afiican Political Economy 33 (August 1985).

Morgan R., The development and applications of a drought early warning system in Botswana, Disasters 9(1), 44-50 (1985).

National Food Strategy, Government Paper, Government of Botswana (November 1985).

Report on the National Food Strategy, Rural Development Unit, Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, Gaborone, Botswana (August 1985).

Sixth National Development Plan (1985-19911, Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, Gaborone, Botswana (November 1985).

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