Nowadays many humanitarian crises are lasting much longer than they used to due to the impact of prolonged conflict, recurring severe weather events, and economic instability.
“I no longer have to go to the market to buy food; I can grow everything on my farm.” These are the words of Marie Muhawenimana, a mother and wife, who I met on a recent visit to central Africa to learn about Canadian Foodgrains Bank’s work in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
Marie has transformed her life by implementing conservation agriculture and participating in her local village and loans saving group. Now that there is enough food to eat, the whole family is transformed. Marie’s children were empowered to do well in school, with her son enrolling in a master’s degree, and her two daughters planning to go to university after high school.
In Ngoma district in Rwanda, I saw the staggering difference between yields from conventional agriculture, and conservation agriculture. In some cases, yields increased by 300 per cent! It still strikes me as a miracle when food is grown from seeds in the ground, and especially when I meet families like Marie’s who have achieved a level of food security that will continue to provide for them in the years to come. This work is effective in a place like Rwanda, where a stable environment and the absence of violent conflict ensures long-term development work can thrive.
But just next door in DRC, ongoing conflict undermines any sense of stability, and the challenges faced by partners when delivering humanitarian aid or implementing long-term strategies to improve livelihoods look very different.
As part of this visit, I met with Foodgrains Bank members and their partner staff implementing humanitarian projects in DRC. These projects are designed to be short-term and lifesaving in emergency situations, but nowadays many humanitarian crises are lasting much longer than they used to due to the impact of prolonged conflict, recurring severe weather events, and economic instability. Right now, there is simply not enough funding being channelled into humanitarian assistance to meet all the needs in the world.
In DRC, ECC-MERU (the local partner of Foodgrains Bank member Mennonite Central Committee Canada) recently provided food assistance and livelihood rebuilding initiatives for people who had been displaced by the 2021 volcanic eruption of Mount Nyiragongo, which destroyed villages, farmland, and livelihoods.
As partner staff in DRC reflected on how the combination of humanitarian and development work—as well as peacebuilding initiatives—is necessary in their fragile context, I too reflected on how Canada can do better in this regard. Within international development circles, this multi-layered response is known as nexus programming, and is an effective way to better address the needs of people we serve. In the words of one of the DRC partner staff: “Nexus programming is about efficiency and flexibility. It is about the progressive shift to self-sufficiency as opposed to dependency on aid.”
Global hunger increased dramatically during the pandemic and has remained high since then, fuelled by conflict, climate, and economic instability. Today, one in 11 people globally experience hunger, and more than 2.3 billion struggle to access adequate food regularly. In the face of this ongoing crisis, the conversation on nexus is more important than ever. Humanitarian assistance in places like Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan, is being stretched beyond what it is meant to do, and development funding is insufficient to fill the gaps. We need a better approach.
As Canadians, we want to see our government act as a leader in the international development space. It is essential that future programming funded by Canada includes better integration between humanitarian aid and development, as well as more flexibility between the two. In unstable situations, this multifaceted nexus approach is most effective in meeting immediate needs, and maximizing the impact of international development dollars for long-term recovery.
The world needs to reckon with the reality that in the face of rising and unprecedented levels of humanitarian needs, our response to crises—which are not lasting days or weeks, but months and sometimes years on end—must be more efficient, and more effective. While humanitarian and development programming are still critical as individual pillars of international development, our approach needs to shift, and nexus is the shift we need.
Chinelo Agom-Eze, Senior Policy Advisor at Canadian Foodgrains Bank
