Posted 5 October 1998

Theme: Impact of HIV/AIDS on agricultural and rural development institutions

prepared by the Rural Institutions and Participation Service (SDAR)
FAO Rural Development Division

The magnitude of the HIV/AIDS problem in Sub-Saharan Africa

In countries hit by the pandemic, morbidity and mortality have risen and are expected to continue to rise in the foreseeable future, changing the demographic structure of households and rural institutions and taking a heavy toll on household resources and assets. This has the consequence, in many affected countries of reversing the social and economic progress of the last few decades with serious negative impacts on household livelihoods.

Since the professionals and other categories of skilled manpower have not been spared by the epidemic, it has meant that the capacities of organisations and institutions to implement important agricultural and rural development programmes in the region have been greatly weakened. The loss of bread winners, parents and guardians at the household level is likely to lead to increased poverty and food insecurity among affected families in sub-Saharan Africa.

Small holder agriculture is a vital sector for rural households and national economies in the subregion. The HIV/AIDS epidemic destroys both the traditional social security mechanisms that provide support to the elderly and orphaned children of AIDS victims as well as the agricultural and rural development institutions that provide technical and financial support to farmers.

The AIDS epidemic has imposed an enormous cost burden on the weakened households and institutions due to: diversion of investment funds to health care, funeral costs, absenteeism, costs of recruiting and replacing staff, loss of both skilled and unskilled labour, reduction of productivity due to loss of experienced human resources.

FAO's AIDS programme: responding to the challenge

FAO was the first UN agency to undertake a detailed and systematic sectoral analysis of the socio-economic impact of HIV/AIDS on rural economies. FAO's actions were motivated by increasing evidence that the HIV/AIDS epidemic, especially in Africa, would intensify existing labour bottlenecks in agriculture; increase widespread malnutrition; add to the problems of rural women, especially female-headed farm households arising from gender division of labour and access to land rights/resources; and deepen the debt crisis by reducing agricultural exports.

Several case studies were conducted in East and West Africa focusing on the impact of AIDS on agriculture and food production systems. ( For more information contact by email: Jacques duGuerny, Chief of the Population Programme at FAO and HIV/AIDS focal point jacques.duguerny@fao.org) These studies contributed to changing the views and perceptions that governments and development agencies held regarding the nature of the epidemic. Many development agencies began to regard the AIDS epidemic not as a mere health problem but more as an important cross-cutting, sectoral and developmental issue.

The Harare Conference: A platform for reorienting and refocusing policies and programmes on institutional responses

A conference on "Responding to HIV/AIDS: Technology Development Needs of African Smallholder Agriculture", was organized by the Institute of Social Studies, the Hague; Wageningen University, Netherlands; the Southern Africa AIDS Information Dissemination Service and the Zimbabwe Agricultural Research Council and held in Harare, 6-12 June 1998. FAO, in collaboration with UNDP, prepared a paper that shifted the focus from impact on agriculture, per se, to the impact on agricultural formal and informal institutions. The paper examined the implications of the epidemic for development policies and programmes. It noted that the epidemic was creating a crisis of unprecedented proportions among the rural institutions with negative implications for policy intervention, service delivery, and programme implementation. In presenting the findings and recommendations of the above mentioned paper, to the conference, FAO highlighted the emergence of new problems for rural institutions due to the changing nature of the clientele of formal agricultural and rural development institutions which gave rise to the existence of two types of clients:

• Traditional clients
  Up to now policies and programmes of the formal rural institutions have been aimed at, and have benefited primarily the healthy and able-bodied adults in the rural areas such as peasant and other small farmers, pastoralists, fisherfolk and other groups of rural dwellers including the indigenous tribes. In this context the focal point of interaction between the personnel of rural institutions and the beneficiaries or target groups has therefore been those healthy adults who participated in development initiatives such as the 'master farmer tillage' training programmes etc. Women were also addressed and targeted, for example, through special training programmes on home economics, cookery and nutrition, primary health, and hygiene. Over time, women have, gradually and increasingly, been also addressed by agricultural extension and training programmes although to a lesser extent than the men. Youth and adolescents have also been an important component of the clientele as they have been involved in many institutional programmes and activities such as the Young Farmer's training programmes.
• New clients
  Recently it has become increasingly clear that in areas of high HIV prevalence, the category of healthy and able-bodied men, women and youth, in the late adolescence to middle-age range, is the one that has been most affected by the impact of HIV/AIDS through heavy morbidity and mortality since it is also the most sexually active social group. As the healthy parents, guardians, and relatives began to die or to be weakened by the HIV epidemic, a new type of clientele began to emerge besides the traditional ones. These have been primarily young or adolescent household heads, the elderly, widowsed women, sick or weakened adults and, in the worst cases, young orphans.

Problems of the new clientele

The new clients are experiencing new and unique problems as a result of the morbidity and mortality of the traditional clients. The new households headed by adolescents, the elderly, and, quite often weakened and sick adults fall deeper into poverty and food insecurity due to loss of cash remittances and shortage of labour for productive activities as land preparation, ploughing, sowing, planting, weed clearing, harvesting, and post-harvesting processing and storage due to time taken out caring for the sick. required to tend the sick as well as for undertaking various production tasks such as land preparation, ploughing, sowing, planting, weed clearing, harvesting, and post-harvesting processing and storage.

Due to their limited strength, they may not be able to use heavy tools, farm machines and animal-drawn equipment, which means that certain types of technologies which may be time saving, would be out of reach of the new clients. They often lack the experience necessary for applying new technologies, and if women or female adolescents, they may lack access to productive assets such as land, water, credit and inputs. They have limited access to and experience with post-harvest, processing, storage, and marketing. The elderly, especially women, are likely to be illiterate and therefore unable to read and follow instructions for the application of, for example fertilisers and use of certain chemicals used in plant protection etc.

The new clients have serious limitations with regard to obtaining credit. Legally,In law children and adolescents are regarded as 'minors' which limits their legal and moral responsibility for loan repayment since they cannot normally be taken to court and be sued in their own right. In the event of default in loan repayment, credit institutions would be unable to legally enforce loan recovery procedures such as attachments, foreclosures and evictions. Moreover, being 'minors' would also imply that they lack secure property rights, including land ownership, which means they would be unable to provide land as collateral. For these reasons, money lending institutions would be unwilling to grant loans to adolescent heads of households.

Institutional problems due to weakening human resource capacities

The increased morbidity and mortality of the staff of formal institutions as a result of the HIV/AIDS impact is resulting in a weakening of institutional capacities through loss of unskilled and skilled staff, including experienced staff at all levels. Ministries and Departments are experiencing delays and disruptions in policy and plan implementation and delivery of the essential services to their clients, the farmers and rural households. Research and extension workers are having to interact with a different target group consisting of youth, women and elderly clients who often do not have the requisite skills/and experience for certain farming tasks or technologies suited to male adults. The loss of skills is resulting in a deterioration of agricultural practices, and changes in cropping patterns, etc. The credit and land tenure institutions are also experiencing some difficulties in implementing their money lending and land allocation programmes since now they have to deal with the new clientele consisting of mainly youth and women, which is the category of people with the weakest and most insecure property rights in most societies of sub-Saharan Africa.

Recommendations for institutional responses

The Harare Conference issued a 'Communiqué' recommending that the formal institutions that provide services and inputs such as extension, research, credit and land should modify, redesign and formulate new methodologies, approaches, and technologies that are sensitive to the age, gender, literacy and cultural values of the new target group to ensure that the youth managing farms acquire the skills that will enable them to cope with their new responsibilities of ensuring food security and other basic needs as well as looking after their siblings.

The credit and land tenure institutions were urged to review and modify their lending criteria to include forms of lending based on community, group, or extended family, collateral and which consider the possibility of re-scheduling loans when necessary, in order to assist households at risk. The land tenure institutions were also urged to review and redefine the criteria for land allocation/settlement and explore the possibility of introducing joint husband-wife titles in settlement schemes and land titling programmes.

It was also recommended that local government authorities in collaboration with traditional authorities should review and assess existing coping mechanisms of extended family and kinship systems with regard to provision of food security to victims of AIDS, support for the elderly, and child fosterage and to identify critical areas and practical types of support that could be provided by the state or private sector institutions or voluntary (including NGO) organisations. In this context it was necessary to review labour intensive food production strategies and to introduce labour-saving technologies appropriate for children, sick adults or the elderly and to strengthen customary ways of labour-sharing arrangements and introduce new methods as appropriate.

The future: focusing on policy interventions and institutional responses

In the follow-up to the Harare conference FAO and UNDP are preparing terms of reference for a set of studies focusing on "the impact of HIV/AIDS on agricultural and rural development institutions, capacity assessment and recommendations for the formulation of appropriate policy interventions and institutional responses"

The case studies will undertake a detailed study of the departments of Extension and Research in two selected countries of Southern Africa. The study activities on each Department will be broken down into two components and will be undertaken by two researchers. The first aspect will study the impacts of HIV on the human resource capacity while the second will analyse the effects of the impacts on the clientele and will focus on the problems at the interface of the impacted upon extension institutions and the emerging clientele.

The main objectives of the study are; to strengthen the capacities of agricultural and rural development institutions, to modify methodological approaches, to formulate appropriate and relevant policy interventions and institutional responses and to improve provision of services to farmers thereby making it possible for the Ministry of Agriculture and its Departments to meet the target outputs in terms of food production as well as agricultural and economic growth. The expected outputs of the case studies are that an assessment of institutional capacity would be undertaken and, through study and analysis, the problems of both the institutions and their clients would be better understood. Recommendations for the design and formulation of new and appropriate approaches, responses and policy interventions would be made. Improved extension services and new and appropriate technologies would be provided to the emerging clientele comprised of the youth, adolescents, the elderly and women.

It will require the contribution of many types of institutions, both public and private, to cover all the dimensions of the interface between AIDS and agriculture.

See also our Resources on HIV/AIDS