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<p>From 2017 to 2020, Sahelian zones of Burkina Faso and Niger were rocked by a series of simultaneous climate, conflict, economic, demographic and health shocks. The crisis came to a head with COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns and market closures in the midst of flooding and an upsurge in terrorism. Meanwhile, in 2015 the USAID-funded “Resilience in the Sahel-Enhanced” (RISE) project had rolled out a series of interventions designed to strengthen households’ resilience to shocks through bolstering their absorptive, adaptive and transformative capacities. This paper documents trends in these capacities and household resilience over the crisis period. It then investigates the impact of RISE interventions on them. It finds that the majority of households were not resilient and key capacities stagnated or declined, including asset ownership, informal safety nets, and access to markets. The prevalence of severe food insecurity rose from 32 to near 50 percent, and incidences of illness and deaths rose precipitously, signaling a humanitarian crisis. The crisis rose to such proportions that many of the RISE project interventions were disrupted—they were not resilient to the shocks themselves. The impact evaluation finds that, overall, the project had a positive impact on households’ resilience and some resilience capacities. However, its impact was below potential. The interventions most vulnerable to flooding, terrorist attacks, and COVID-19 restrictions did not show positive impacts. Further, despite the project’s approach of integrating humanitarian and development assistance, households’ access to food aid plummeted as shocks escalated. Yet food aid had strong, positive impacts on the resilience of households that did have access to it. In navigating the Humanitarian-Development Nexus in resilience programming, this study points to the key importance of (1) paying attention to the resilience and sustainability-of-impact of interventions themselves; and (2) strategic planning in advance to pivot to humanitarian assistance when shocks rise to crisis proportions.</p>

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Navigating the humanitarian-development nexus in resilience programming: lessons from escalating crisis in Sahelian West Africa (2017–2020)

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年4月18日

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  • Lisa C. Smith,
  • Timothy R. Frankenberger

摘要

From 2017 to 2020, Sahelian zones of Burkina Faso and Niger were rocked by a series of simultaneous climate, conflict, economic, demographic and health shocks. The crisis came to a head with COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns and market closures in the midst of flooding and an upsurge in terrorism. Meanwhile, in 2015 the USAID-funded “Resilience in the Sahel-Enhanced” (RISE) project had rolled out a series of interventions designed to strengthen households’ resilience to shocks through bolstering their absorptive, adaptive and transformative capacities. This paper documents trends in these capacities and household resilience over the crisis period. It then investigates the impact of RISE interventions on them. It finds that the majority of households were not resilient and key capacities stagnated or declined, including asset ownership, informal safety nets, and access to markets. The prevalence of severe food insecurity rose from 32 to near 50 percent, and incidences of illness and deaths rose precipitously, signaling a humanitarian crisis. The crisis rose to such proportions that many of the RISE project interventions were disrupted—they were not resilient to the shocks themselves. The impact evaluation finds that, overall, the project had a positive impact on households’ resilience and some resilience capacities. However, its impact was below potential. The interventions most vulnerable to flooding, terrorist attacks, and COVID-19 restrictions did not show positive impacts. Further, despite the project’s approach of integrating humanitarian and development assistance, households’ access to food aid plummeted as shocks escalated. Yet food aid had strong, positive impacts on the resilience of households that did have access to it. In navigating the Humanitarian-Development Nexus in resilience programming, this study points to the key importance of (1) paying attention to the resilience and sustainability-of-impact of interventions themselves; and (2) strategic planning in advance to pivot to humanitarian assistance when shocks rise to crisis proportions.