Names have been changed to protect privacy.
A steep incline leads up to Malisuoa’s shepherd’s mud hut homestead in rural Mphokojoane community in the mountainous district of Mokhotlong, Lesotho. In her modest hut, which she shares with her three children and her husband, 32-year-old Malisuoa narrates how the back-to-back droughts of 2022 and 2023, destroyed her livelihoods and forced her to seek help from her slightly better-off neighbors to meet basic food needs. She was not aware that these droughts were caused by La Niña events but their effects were very clear.
Having grown up in a farming community, Malisuoa is no stranger to hard work. Until the drought, her family, like that of 80% of Basotho, relied on agriculture for their livelihood. Once the drought occurred, their eating patterns were forced to change since their crop yields were low and they could no longer plough. Loss of animals was also a factor. Her family, like many others in Lesotho, found themselves struggling and going to bed hungry. Whenever she could, she would work at other farms that were still productive, to earn some money to sustain their living.
Matsepo, a 41-year-old widow from the remote mountainous area of Maoa-mafubelu in Leribè district, is raising five children, the youngest being four years old. Her husband died of an HIV/AIDS related disease in 2020, and she is the sole bread winner in the household and largely depends on piecemeal jobs in farms located in neighboring South Africa. With the onset of droughts, she and her household have needed to borrow money from neighbors to buy food. She was also considering taking her kids out of school to reduce what is considered during emergencies as discretionary household expenditures, as is often the case in poor households. The significant drop-out rate from school and the immense learning losses in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic provides clear evidence for why taking kids out of school for even short periods could have deleterious impacts that last longer than the shocks themselves.
Fortunately for both Malisuoa and Matsepo, the Government of Lesotho put the Lesotho Pathways to Sustainable Livelihoods Project (PSLP) in place, with financial and technical assistance from the World Bank, and the emergency response component was triggered. PSLP is a $26.5 million project, financed through an International Development Association (IDA) credit, and aims to improve the efficiency and equity of social assistance programs and strengthen the livelihoods of poor and vulnerable households. PSLP is implemented by the Ministry of Gender, Youth, and Social Development since August 2022 and will run until June 2027.
Through the emergency response component, the project targeted 45,000 beneficiary households of the Child Grant Program (CGP) across all districts with two rounds of cash transfer top-ups. These cash transfers have gone on to improve nutrition and food security across various contexts. The transfers also helped prevent these households from having to engage in distress sale of productive assets, borrow at high interest rates, and take children out of school. In fact, it furthered their efforts to enhance their livelihoods.
Malisuoa received the emergency cash top-up of $142 bundled with their CGP grant. With the top-up she ensured that she purchased much needed groceries (a far cry from when she would have to take goods on credit or borrow money) and also invested in a keyhole garden for growing crops, such as spinach and carrots. With the emergency cash, Matsepo was able to buy school materials for two of her children in secondary school, and all her children were able to continue attending school. Determined to improve her living conditions, Matsepo started home gardening, specifically vegetable production, which has led to more, and better, food for her children. Moreover, she diversified her livelihoods by investing her earnings from gardening in selling mobile recharge cards in the community. She also decided to save some of the money for future contingencies.
“My family used to go two days without food. I have added another home garden whereby we now have enough vegetables to improve my children’s lives,” said Matsepo.
The emergency cash transfers, beyond providing a lifeline during shocks, protected hard fought gains in human capital and livelihoods, and bolstered households’ future livelihoods prospects. Additionally, PSLP is already investing in improving the livelihoods of existing safety net beneficiaries, but without such contingent support in an environment of increasing climatic shocks, these investments face a much higher level of risk of failure.
