Poverty targeting has generated quite a polarised debate concerning the way forward for social protection policy in southern Africa and elsewhere in the continent. The main lines of this debate involve contrasting some form of categorical provision (for example, pensions for all people over 65, or grants for all children under five) with restricted provision to those most urgently in need of continuous support from the state (the destitute and those quite unable for one reason or another to provide for themselves). All such transfers are 'targeted' in one way or another, however criteria differ from the simple (e.g. an age threshold) to the quite complex (a set of proxy indicators for deprivation, such as lacking able bodied adults in the household, a high ratio of dependents, or eating one meal a day). The term ‘poverty targeting' refers to this problem of deciding the rules and the practice of restricting social transfers to the most seriously deprived individuals and families in society. This brief focuses on the proportion of the population in a poor country that should be reached by a poverty targeted transfer, and the income distribution effects of the transfer once it is made. It explores these aspects using data from large-scale household surveys in Ghana and Malawi.

The period 2006 to 2009 was characterised by great instability in commodity markets and in the world economy. A food price crisis was superimposed on rising fuel and fertiliser prices, and was then succeeded by a major global financial crisis. This was dubbed in some quarters as the ‘3-Fs crisis’ for poor countries: food, fuel and finance. The overall prognosis has been dire, with predictions of 100 million additional people worldwide being pushed below the poverty line, and poor countries as well as poor citizens struggling to avoid a catastrophic downturn in their ability to avoid hunger and deprivation. This paper considers the food, fuel and financial crisis from the retrospective standpoint of late 2009. First, it revisits international commodity price trends updated to November 2009. Second, it draws attention to differences in the meaning of real prices between poor and better off people within poor countries. Third, it considers departures between domestic and international food price behaviour and the reasons for such differences. Lastly, it broadens the discussion to interpret the implications for poor countries of the global financial crisis and its aftermath.

This brief examines the validity of a number of options available for reducing risk and instability in staple food markets using so-called ‘market-based’ instruments. As their name suggests, such instruments are in principle provided by private suppliers or trade associations on a strictly commercial basis. They include weather-indexed insurance contracts, commodity exchanges, futures markets and warehouse receipt systems. The brief looks at examples of the different market-based instruments as well as more traditional options based on public management or public-private partnerships, taking into account opportunities opened up by new communication technologies. It also assesses the contribution that market-based instruments can make in the context of a broader portfolio of policies aimed to reduce vulnerability to hunger.

Many problems of hunger and food insecurity in Africa are seasonal, in the sense that the worst effects are concentrated at certain times of year. This brief first describes the seasonal patterns of livelihoods and food insecurity in rural sub-Saharan Africa. It then reviews policy interventions that were adopted in the past to address seasonal hunger – “seasonal safety nets” – and contrasts these with more recent “social protection” approaches.