February 2015

Cologne Forum for International Relations and
Security Policy (KFIBS), registered association
KFIBS COMMENTARY
– February 2015 –
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Empowering Africa’s Poor When the State Is Absent:
Can Local Resilience Be Built in Areas of Limited Statehood1
By Sabine Hoehn2
Sabine.Hoehn@glasgow.ac.uk
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Contact KFIBS e.V. (registered association): Balthasar-Neumann-Platz 24G, 50321 BRUEHL, GERMANY,
E-mail: info@kfibs.org, Web Site: www.kfibs.org
1
The views expressed in this commentary are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect
those of KFIBS.
2 The author is ‘British Academy Leadership Fellow’ at the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of
Glasgow. She received her PhD in African Studies in 2010 from the University of Edinburgh. She contributes as a
guest author to KFIBS’s Africa Research Group.
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Empowering Africa’s Poor When the State Is Absent
February 2015
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Introductory Remarks
Building resilience in areas of fragile statehood is a relatively new idea in the
international development cooperation with Africa. By providing a social safety net for
grassroots donors aim to bridge the gap between disaster relief and development
cooperation, to harmonise their projects better and to reach local people directly instead
of working through unreliable state institutions. However, there are a number of
problems with the concept of resilience. The term is new and insufficiently defined which
hampers aid harmonisation. It often relies on a simplified understanding of fragile
statehood and it depends on partners whose agendas might clash with core values of
international development cooperation. This is why building resilience will only be
successful if donors think carefully whether they are willing to cooperate with new
partners and avoid repeating the mistake of trying to achieve ambitious development
goals with a single idea and very limited means.
Resilience – A New Chance for a Common European Approach to Development?
Resilience features prominently in the new European approach to development
cooperation. It is said to be ‘an opportunity to bring together political dialogue,
humanitarian and development work and priorities in a comprehensive, coherent and
effective approach to achieve better results on the ground’.3 The British Department for
International Development (DFID) placed resilience at the heart of its approach to longterm development and emergency response. It is also one of four main policy goals of the
German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and its
strategy on peace and security.4 There are a number of global initiatives to strengthen
resilience, e.g. in Africa. For example, initiatives like ‘Supporting the Horn of Africa’s
Resilience’ (SHARE) and the ‘Global Alliance for Resilience (AGIR) – Sahel and West
3
Council conclusions on EU approach to resilience, Brussels, 28 May 2013, p. 1,
http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_Data/docs/pressdata/EN/foraff/137319.pdf (last accessed on 10
February 2015).
4 Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development, Development for Peace and Security: Development
Policy in the Context of Conflict, Fragility and Violence, BMZ Strategy Paper 4|2013e,
http://www.bmz.de/en/publications/type_of_publication/strategies/Strategiepapier333_04_2013.pdf (last accessed
on 10 February 2015).
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Africa’ are cooperation agreements between international donors, aid organisations and
the respective governments to increase the resilience of those most at risk from external
shocks. A proposed ‘Global Fund for Social Protection’ should ensure social protection
programmes in least developed countries and insure people against backlashes from
external shocks like floods or draughts. High hopes are placed on building resilience.
Projects to strengthen resilience are expected to directly benefit the poor and thus be
widely accepted. They should lessen the impact of credit failures and lead to long-term
self-reliance. Donors hope to marry disaster relief and longer development efforts
through resilience projects. Moreover, they hope to achieve the long demanded greater
harmonisation of development approaches within the donor community. Resilience’s
people-centred approach promises to build local capacity instead of strengthening state
institutions as the previous concept of stability had done. Projects to build resilience can
be implemented with partners in society; they are thought to be possible even in areas of
limited statehood.5
However, despite its increasing use in development circles, resilience remains an
under-defined term in development cooperation. In 2013, the British national daily
newspaper The Guardian complained that nobody really knew what resilience meant and
that there was still not a compelling assessment framework for measuring progress.6
Agencies differ in their specific definition of resilience and have a varying understanding
what is required to build resilience and how to measure progress. There are no new
instruments to measure the projects’ impact and many evaluation attempts measured in
effect vulnerability, a more established concept in development cooperation. The lack of a
common definition and the difficulties in measuring its impact raise doubts that the term
can really lead to greater aid harmonisation.
Because resilience remains under-defined, it is unclear how to know resilience when
one sees it, let alone build it. Until now donors have focused on projects including direct
transfer of cash to the people in greatest need. This seems to be especially important in
areas of limited statehood where the state as the main provider of reliable services is
unavailable. Oxfam received funding from the European Union (EU) to set up a micro5
Pospisil, J/Besancenot, S (2014): EU Donor Policies in Situations of Fragility: Promoting ‘Resilience’? In:
European Journal of Development Research, Volume 26, Issue 5 (December 2014), pp. 614-628.
6
Hussain,
M
(2013):
Resilience:
meaningless
jargon
or
development
solution?,
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2013/mar/05/resilience-developmentbuzzwords, The Guardian, 5 March 2013 (last accessed on 10 February 2015).
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finance project for rural households in Mali. Similarly in Burkina Faso the nongovernmental organisation ‘Action Contre la Faim’ (ACF) organised cash transfers to
households in remote areas. In North Kenya the UN World Food Programme (WFP) has
moved its assistance from food aid to cash transfer. But donors have encountered a
number of difficult choices in practice. When state institutions are not available, donors
have to rely on new partners who have distinct agendas and organisational structures.
Donors therefore might have to compromise on other principles of development
cooperation like gender equity or democracy. It is also important in what sense the state is
limited in a given context, whether it is in its legitimacy, capacity or authority. Depending
on the kind of limitation interventions might aggravate the problem of limited statehood
rather than just functioning as stop gap for limited state capacity.
What is required is thus a careful consideration of the kind of state limitation as well
as clear guidelines about new partners. Although the requirements complicate programme
design, interventions have to rely on partners and need to be contextually designed, in
order to increase ownership. Donors have debated whether adding conditions to social
safety measures would ensure correct implementation. However, conditionalities require
additional resources as they need to be monitored closely. In areas of limited statehood
this is not always an option. Considering context also means unpacking the concept of
limited statehood and acknowledging that providing social safety nets can have conflicting
effects on state fragility. Providing basic services through partnering up with non-state,
traditional, and customary organisations can compensate state capacity deficits to a certain
degree, but may deepen any existing legitimacy deficits.
Understanding Fragile States
So-called fragile states (or weak states) cannot be easily classified in binary categories
of stable – fragile, because states can be fragile in different aspects to different degrees. A
more differentiated view on fragility complicates the analysis, but makes it a much better
instrument to evaluate the situation on the ground and conceptualise social protection
interventions. The taxonomy differentiates between state authority, capacity and
legitimacy and allows for different degrees of fragility within those three categories.7 The
7 Graevingholt, J/Ziaja, S/Kreibaum, M (2012): State Fragility: Towards a Multi-Dimensional Empirical Typology,
Discussion Paper, 3/2012, Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE), Bonn.
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result is a fairly specific grid to evaluate different situations that also allows subnational
differences in state fragility.
Designing adequate social protection mechanisms needs to take into account which
dimension of statehood is fragile: its authority, capacity or legitimacy. In practice, donors
have tended to focus on weak capacity while neglecting legitimacy and authority as
dimensions of state fragility8 and have thus tended to use one approach for different
kinds of state fragility.9 They have pursued a very ambitious agenda by trying to build
strong functioning states with minimal resources. Their focus on individual capacity
building efforts is based on the tacit assumption that strengthening capacity alone will
automatically lead to more legitimacy and greater authority.10 However, providing social
protection mechanism in states with weak capacity but relatively high legitimacy like
Malawi will have a very different outcome than service provisions in states with weak
capacity but equally low levels of local legitimacy like the Democratic Republic of Congo
(DR Congo). In these situations, acceptance of projects will remain low if interventions
are confused with services provided by the state. Here the involvement of accepted local
partners is the key to increase legitimacy and local ownership.
The nature, duration and complexity of the projects also determine their outcome in
situations of fragile statehood. Obviously, it is easier to design programmes, which require
only a limited number of interventions and can be delivered by a few agents.11 A direct
transfer of cash to households is possible in areas of limited statehood, but a programme
that combines cash transfers with building public infrastructure like the ‘Productive Safety
Net Programme’ (PSNP) in Ethiopia where people are required to work on projects to
improve livelihoods in return for goods and cash.
If the number of interventions and partners is limited then the provision of collective
goods and services is possible even under extremely adverse conditions of fragile or failed
8
Teskey, G/Schnell, S/Poole, A (2012): Beyond capacity – addressing authority and legitimacy in fragile states,
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/PUBLICSECTORANDGOVERNANCE/Resources/2857411343934891414/8787489-1347032641376/GettingBeyondCapacity.pdf (last accessed on 10 February 2015).
9 Ayee, Joseph R A (2011): Social Inclusion and Service Delivery in a Fragile and Post-conflict Environment in
Africa, ACBF – Occasional Paper, No. 15, Harare.
10 Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (2009): Promoting Resilient States and Constructive
State-Society Relations – Legitimacy, Transparency and Accountability, BMZ Special 168,
http://www.bmz.de/en/publications/type_of_publication/strategies/spezial168.pdf (last accessed on 10 February
2015).
11 Krasner, S D/Risse, T (2014): External Actors, State-Building, and Service Provision in Areas of Limited
Statehood: Introduction. In: Governance, Volume 27, Issue 4, October 2014, pp. 545-567.
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February 2015
statehood. An absent state can then be even conducive for the project, because it means
that the local population does not associate the service with a repressive state.12
How to Span a Social Safety Net: Problems with Donor Approaches
In designing social protection programmes donors face a number of known challenges
and a few new ones. They still need to harmonise their initiatives and find adequate ways
to measure impact. Additionally, interventions in situations of fragile statehood might be
dependent on new partners whose agendas are not necessarily in agreement with other
principles of development cooperation.
First, donors need to harmonise their initiatives and increase the recipients’ ownership
of programmes. The ‘Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness’ (2005) and the ‘Accra
Agenda for Action’ (2008), the two most important international agreements in
development cooperation in the last decade, stipulate that donors should align behind
common goals and avoid duplication of programmes through greater coordination. This
is particularly difficult with regard to social protection, because the term is only loosely
defined without common components. It thus includes a number of very different
programmes,13 which differ widely in their complexity and required institutionalisation.
This makes it particularly difficult to harmonise projects.14 However, greater
harmonisation is seen as necessary to increase the impact of interventions and to make
them more relevant for beneficiaries. Evaluations of social protection projects suggest
that there is a substantial difference between an integrated system of social protection and
a collection of programmes.15 An integrated system of social protection does not only
require high levels of coordination but also demands a logical sequence of interventions.
Second, measurable impact is a priority in international development. But measuring
impact is a complex and long-term process, especially if the envisioned outcome,
12
Lake, M (2014): Organizing Hypocrisy: Providing Legal Accountability for Human Rights Violations in Areas of
Limited Statehood. In: International Studies Quarterly, Volume 58, Issue 3, September 2014, pp. 515-526.
13
Hussain,
M
(2013):
Resilience:
meaningless
jargon
or
development
solution?,
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2013/mar/05/resilience-developmentbuzzwords, The Guardian, 5 March 2013 (last accessed on 10 February 2015).
14 Krasner, S D/Risse, T (2014): External Actors, State-Building, and Service Provision in Areas of Limited
Statehood: Introduction. In: Governance, Volume 27, Issue 4, October 2014, pp. 545-567.
15 Gentilini, U/Omamo, S W (2011): Social protection 2.0: Exploring issues, evidence and debates in a globalizing
world. In: Food Policy, Volume 36, Issue 3, June 2011, pp. 329-340; Gentilini, U/Honorati, M/Yemtsov, R (2014):
The State of Social Safety Nets 2014, The World Bank, Working Paper 87984, Washington, DC.
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resilience, is itself an under-defined term. Additionally, new social protection initiatives
often fail to build on existing strategies and practices. They also might create competition
between public and private service providers and confusion amongst beneficiaries about
the relation between the provider of services, the state and donors.16 Third, new partners
might complicate service delivery, especially if their agendas clashes with other principles
of development cooperation, and state institutions are not available to ensure adequate
implementation and monitoring of projects.
Lastly, designing safety measures for the most vulnerable parts of society always faces
the challenge of adequate targeting. Any cut-off criteria potentially exclude those in
need.17 Especially in urban areas or situations of blurred poverty boundaries, it is very
difficult to identify the poorest and most vulnerable parts of the population.
Enforcing Social Protection in a System of Social Justice?
The integration of social protection initiatives into wider programmes of enforceable
social justice has been presented as an opportunity to increase local ownership of
programmes, to move single projects into a system of social protection and to ensure the
long-term benefit of initiatives. Devereux et al. (2011) suggest addressing structural
vulnerabilities and socio-economic inequalities instead of concentrating on poverty and
external shocks alone.18 They argue that in systems of ‘social protection plus’ social safety
should increasingly become claims-based and justiciable. This empowers communities
and builds social contracts between states and citizens.
But that would require other elements of effective governance, in particular a
functioning and independent judicial and legal system. The most progressive social
protection interventions thus rely on enforceable legislation, in order to transform a
charitable gesture into a justiciable right.19 However, this would necessitate a state that is
16
Carpenter, S/Slater, R/Mallett, R (2012): Social Protection and Basic Services in Fragile and Conflict-Affected
Situations, SLRC, Working Paper 8, October 2012, London,
http://www.qualitycareinternational.com/resources/Livlihoods%20and%20services%20affected%20by%20conflict.pdf
(last
accessed on 10 February 2015).
17 For a discussion of the problems with cut-off lines in Malawi, Zambia and Ethiopia see Frank Ellis (2012): ‘We
Are All Poor Here’: Economic Difference, Social Divisiveness and Targeting Cash Transfers in Sub-Saharan Africa.
In: Journal of Development Studies, Volume 48, Issue 2, pp. 201-214.
18 Devereux, S/Béné, C/Chopra, D/Koehler, G/Roelen, K/Sabates-Wheeler, R and te Lintelo, D (2011): Social
Protection for Social Justice, IDS Bulletin 42.6, Brighton, http://www.ids.ac.uk/publication/social-protection-forsocial-justice (last accessed on 10 February 2015).
19 Ibid.
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capable and legitimate enough to provide the enforcement of social protection
mechanism. The argument is circular. Increasing the population’s resilience in areas of
fragile statehood requires social protection mechanisms which need to be enforced by an
already functioning governance structure.
The alternative would be to seriously think about the potential of new partners and
the compromises that donors might be willing to agree to, in order to ensure that the
most vulnerable in society are protected. Building resilience is a long-term commitment
that can only be successful if the local population accepts its value. In contrast to
emergency relief resilience programmes confront donors with the difficult question how
far they are willing to compromise their principles, in order to provide a social safety net
for the local population. In areas of limited statehood local social rules and power players
become especially important to provide services and to give them legitimacy. New
partners like religious organisations, communal groups or even traditional authorities
could play a key role in ensuring social protection but might confront donors with
difficult choices if their principles differ substantially from core values in international
development cooperation.
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February 2015
– IMPRINT –
KFIBS Editorial Staff:
▪ Mr Sascha Arnautović, MA, Doctoral Candidate (responsible)
▪ Dr (PhD) Eva Patricia Rakel
▪ Mr Jan Menzer (Diploma in Political Science), Associate Member of the
KFIBS Editorial Staff
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