CARE 2004-2005 Niger Evaluation of Emergency Mitigation Strategies in CARE-Niger Programs

The report examines CARE-Niger's initiatives in Niger during the 2004-2005 food crisis: rotating savings and credit groups, social redistribution of small livestock, and food security stocks. The report examines the extent to which these CARE-Niger activities protected the assets of affected households (particularly the most vulnerable ones) and also examines how CARE-Niger's projects interfaced with households' own responses to the crisis.

Four principal recommendations are made:

1. Improve the tailoring of interventions to the specifics of individual household needs through complementing group delivery methods with individual-oriented approaches.
2. Work towards building robust diversified livelihoods by taking greater account of mobility in programming. Advisory services that are based on strategic thinking about household opportunities in space and time are considered a promising avenue.
3. Extend the programmatic insights provided by the Household Livelihood Security (HHLS) framework to consider means of reinforcing horizontal household linkages in addition to the current emphasis on vertical linkages with civil society.
4. Incorporating a more nuanced understanding of household vulnerability in monitoring and evaluation capacities by increasing the focus on household level changes, particularly demographic factors.