Stephen Devereux
Biographic Data
| ID | 187940 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Stephen Devereux |
| GIVEN NAMES | Stephen |
| FAMILY NAME | Devereux |
| SIGNATURE | DEVEREUX S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Institute of Development Studies |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4885-0085 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 57 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 343 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 57 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1988 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Explaining the Normalisation of Black Hunger in South Africa
Millions of Black South Africans are food insecure and malnourished, 30+ years after the democratic transition to Black majority rule in 1994. Yet South Africa is an upper-middle-income country with sufficient food, a constitutional right to food, and comprehensive social protection. High levels of poverty and unemployment are key drivers of hunger, but this paper explores another plausible explanation: "normalisation." Citizens and the state hav…
Resilient people, resilient systems
Resilience, increasingly emphasized in both development and humanitarian discourses, is a complex concept that is often treated simplistically, leading to residualist or reactive interventions that do not consider the structural causes of vulnerability. Moreover, there is often confusion between “people‐centred” and “systems‐centred” approaches. This article argues for a holistic approach. Resilient individuals, households and communities (IHC) a…
Social Protection
This article unpacks the expanding social protection agenda, in which promotive objectives have been added to the original welfarist or safety net aim of protection. It draws out the resulting tensions, potentials and limits, to inform a discussion of where African social protection is and is headed. After tracing several initial drivers of social assistance in Africa – structural adjustment, food insecurity and famines, HIV and AIDS, and conflic…
Introduction
Social protection has established itself as a vibrant policy sector across the global South, and as a pillar of international development cooperation. Social protection features in numerous country policies and development agency strategies, as well as in several Sustainable Development Goals. However, the global context today is characterised by a range of emerging and intensifying challenges and uncertainties, including post-Covid-19 pandemic r…
Glossary – Reimagining Social Protection
This is the Glossary for IDS Bulletin 55.2, Reimagining Social Protection
Performing social policy diffusion
A growing literature explains the diffusion of social protection policies and, in particular, cash transfer programmes throughout Africa since the early 2000s as a paradigmatic policy transfer process. Most contributions emphasise the central role of transnational development agencies in this process, which is typically characterised as ‘donor-driven’. This article argues that individual agents, notably consultants who were commissioned by agenci…
Urban social assistance
Social protection responses to Covid-19 in Africa
Most African countries implemented measures to contain the spread of COVID-19 during 2020, such as restrictions on business activity and travel, school closures and stay-at-home lockdowns for several months. These restrictive policies had adverse economic and social consequences that triggered a follow-up wave of expansionist public interventions intended to mitigate these effects. ‘Shock-responsive’ social protection measures included increased …
Urban-Sensitive Social Protection
Experience with urban social protection programmes is relatively limited in the Global South. Extensions or duplicates of rural social assistance programmes do not reflect the distinct vulnerabilities of the urban poor, who face higher living costs and more precarious employment, and are not reached by social insurance schemes that are designed for formally employed workers. Neither the Sustainable Development Goals nor the New Urban Agenda refle…
External Donors and Social Protection in Africa
External actors have invested heavily in propagating social protection policies and programs throughout Africa in the past 20 years. This policy transfer process has been led by the international development community—bilateral and multilateral donors, United Nations agencies, international financial institutions and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Strategies include (1) building the evidence base for positive impacts, especi…
Conceptualising Covid-19’s impacts on household food security
Money and the Message
Graduation programmes are innovative because they combine regular cash transfers with livelihood promotion and – most innovatively – a combination of training and tailored coaching. The latter is sometimes considered the ‘X-factor’ in the graduation model, but little evidence exists regarding its role in affecting change. This paper presents findings from a mixed methods evaluation of a graduation programme in Burundi. We find that (i) training a…
Famine
This entry first reviews operational definitions of famine, then tracks the shifting geography of famine over time, from Asia and Europe to sub‐Saharan Africa. The analysis of causes of famine is dominated by two sets of factors: bad weather and bad politics. Theoretical approaches add demography, economics, and human geography to environmental and political explanations, illustrating the complexity of famine processes. In the twenty‐first centur…
Accessing the ‘Right’ Kinds of Material and Symbolic Capital
This article investigates how well South Africa’s Child Support Grant (CSG) responds to the material and psychosocial needs of adolescents, and the resultant effects on schooling and risky behaviour. One driver of schooling decisions is shame related to poverty and the ‘social cost’ of school, where a premium must often be paid for fashionable clothes or accessories. The other driver relates to symbolic and consumptive capital gained through enga…
Is targeting ethical
Targeting as a mechanism for allocating scarce public resources efficiently and equitably has recently come under sustained attack, for both pragmatic reasons – the apparent impossibility of achieving perfect targeting accuracy – and ethical reasons – social divisiveness and perceptions that excluding some people from benefits is socially unjust. Universalism is offered as a fairer and more inclusive alternative, although universal programmes are…
Where Next for Social Protection
The rapid ascendancy of social protection up the development policy agenda raises questions about whether its current prominence will be sustained, or whether it will turn out to be just another development fad. What trajectory will social protection follow, which actors will drive it forward and what will be the main issues and challenges? This article reports on a small foresight study designed to address the question: ‘Where next for social pr…
Social protection for enhanced food security in sub-Saharan Africa
Stakeholder Perceptions on Graduation in Ethiopia and Rwanda
The Food Security Programme in Ethiopia and the Vision 2020 Umurenge Programme in Rwanda deliver a combination of consumption support (cash or food transfers, Public Works employment) and livelihood support (asset packages, microfinance) with the objective of ‘graduating’ rural households out of food insecurity and poverty into self-reliant livelihoods. This article presents perspectives on graduation of influential stakeholders in Ethiopia and R…
Evidence on Graduation in Practice
This article examines graduation impacts of social protection programmes in Africa, by presenting evidence from an interim evaluation of the ‘Enhancing the Productive Capacity of Extremely Poor People’ project, implemented by Concern Worldwide in Rwanda's Southern Province. The project builds on the principles of the Rwandan government's national social protection scheme, the Vision 2020 Umurenge Programme (VUP). Its design is adapted from the ‘g…
Transforming Social Protection
Sustainable Graduation from Social Protection Programmes
Efforts to reduce extreme poverty by assisting poor people to cross income or asset thresholds are receiving increasing attention in social protection programming. Livelihood-promoting interventions aim to reduce vulnerability, so that participants can manage moderate risk and 'graduate' from social protection provision. This article elaborates the theory of change underpinning the notion of graduation and explores the range of enabling and const…
Hunger
Introduction
The articles in this IDS Bulletin are drawn from a conference hosted by the Centre for Social Protection at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), Brighton, UK, in April 2011. The conference brought together academics and practitioners who understand social protection to be more than a palliative agenda for alleviating poverty and vulnerability, believing instead that social protection should be fundamentally interested in realising economic…
Social protection in South Africa
South Africa's social protection system is exceptional not only because of the extensive coverage, relative generosity and efficient delivery of its social grants, but because these grants are underpinned by political commitment and legislated rights. Uniquely in Africa, the social protection agenda has been government-led, driven by domestic civil society rather than external donors, and enforced by a justiciable ‘social contract’ established in…
Social Protection in Africa
Social protection initiatives in Africa increasingly aim to institutionalize systems that guarantee assistance for the very poor and protect the vulnerable against livelihood risks. Much of the impetus has come from international development actors, with some notable exceptions. Three overlapping agendas are shaping these developments: a technocratic concern with evidence of effects and cost‐effectiveness; a political preoccupation with constitue…
Sen's Entitlement Approach
Twenty years after Poverty and Famines elaborated the entitlement approach as an innovative and holistic approach to famine analysis, debates about some of its fundamental assertions remain unresolved. This paper examines four limitations acknowledged by Sen himself: starvation by choice, disease-driven rather than starvation-driven mortality, ambiguities in entitlement specification and extra-legal entitlement transfers. It concludes that Sen's …
Famine Intensity and Magnitude Scales
Ambiguities in current usage of the term 'famine' have had tragic implications for response and accountability in a number of recent food crises. This paper proposes a new approach to defining famine based on the use of intensity and magnitude scales, where 'intensity' refers to the severity of the crisis at a given location and point in time, while 'magnitude' describes the aggregate impact of a crisis. The scales perform three operations on 'fa…
Social protection for enhanced food security in sub-Saharan Africa
Transforming Social Protection
Social protection responses to Covid-19 in Africa
Most African countries implemented measures to contain the spread of COVID-19 during 2020, such as restrictions on business activity and travel, school closures and stay-at-home lockdowns for several months. These restrictive policies had adverse economic and social consequences that triggered a follow-up wave of expansionist public interventions intended to mitigate these effects. ‘Shock-responsive’ social protection measures included increased …
Social Protection in Africa
Social protection initiatives in Africa increasingly aim to institutionalize systems that guarantee assistance for the very poor and protect the vulnerable against livelihood risks. Much of the impetus has come from international development actors, with some notable exceptions. Three overlapping agendas are shaping these developments: a technocratic concern with evidence of effects and cost‐effectiveness; a political preoccupation with constitue…
Cash transfers and high food prices
The Malawi Famine of 2002
Better Marginalised than Incorporated? Pastoralist Livelihoods in Somali Region, Ethiopia
Goats Before Ploughs
This article draws on the ‘entitlement’ and ‘coping strategies’ literature to argue that consumption smoothing is not the only priority of poor households facing food production shocks or income declines. In selecting from the range of responses available to them, decision makers retain economic and social as well as nutritional objectives, and they will sequence their responses according to the long term costs as well as the immediate returns as…
Entitlements, availability and famine
Is targeting ethical
Targeting as a mechanism for allocating scarce public resources efficiently and equitably has recently come under sustained attack, for both pragmatic reasons – the apparent impossibility of achieving perfect targeting accuracy – and ethical reasons – social divisiveness and perceptions that excluding some people from benefits is socially unjust. Universalism is offered as a fairer and more inclusive alternative, although universal programmes are…
Sustainable Graduation from Social Protection Programmes
Efforts to reduce extreme poverty by assisting poor people to cross income or asset thresholds are receiving increasing attention in social protection programming. Livelihood-promoting interventions aim to reduce vulnerability, so that participants can manage moderate risk and 'graduate' from social protection provision. This article elaborates the theory of change underpinning the notion of graduation and explores the range of enabling and const…
Introduction
Social Pensions in Southern Africa in the Twentieth Century
The social pension was introduced in South Africa in 1928, but eligibility was extended to African South Africans in 1944 and to African Namibians only in 1973. Botswana introduced its own social pension scheme in 1996, and Lesotho followed as recently as 2004. Initially conceived as a welfarist programme to provide social assistance to ‘poor whites’, South Africa's social pension was later exploited for a complex combination of political objecti…
Drought and survival in rural Namibia
The 1992 drought in southern Africa reduced national grain harvests to less than half of 1991 levels, caused substantial livestock mortality and severely compromised rural livelihoods. This paper disaggregates the impact of the drought on three vulnerable socio‐economic groups in Namibia — smallholder crop farmers, livestock rearers and commercial farmworkers. A modified entitlement framework is adopted: as well as examining entitlement‐generatin…
Introduction
The articles in this IDS Bulletin are drawn from a conference hosted by the Centre for Social Protection at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), Brighton, UK, in April 2011. The conference brought together academics and practitioners who understand social protection to be more than a palliative agenda for alleviating poverty and vulnerability, believing instead that social protection should be fundamentally interested in realising economic…
Social protection in South Africa
South Africa's social protection system is exceptional not only because of the extensive coverage, relative generosity and efficient delivery of its social grants, but because these grants are underpinned by political commitment and legislated rights. Uniquely in Africa, the social protection agenda has been government-led, driven by domestic civil society rather than external donors, and enforced by a justiciable ‘social contract’ established in…
Using technology to deliver social protection
Providing cash transfers to vulnerable groups reduces vulnerability and chronic poverty; but delivering cash to remote, rural locations can be expensive and insecure. Alternative delivery systems using technology are thus being piloted. This article uses examples from southern Africa to highlight the opportunities and risks involved in using technology to deliver social protection, with particular focus on two schemes in Malawi. It concludes that…
Too Much Inequality or Too Little? Inequality and Stagnation in Ethiopian Agriculture
The agricultural sector remains our Achilles heel
Social Protection for Transformation
Performing social policy diffusion
A growing literature explains the diffusion of social protection policies and, in particular, cash transfer programmes throughout Africa since the early 2000s as a paradigmatic policy transfer process. Most contributions emphasise the central role of transnational development agencies in this process, which is typically characterised as ‘donor-driven’. This article argues that individual agents, notably consultants who were commissioned by agenci…
Where Next for Social Protection
The rapid ascendancy of social protection up the development policy agenda raises questions about whether its current prominence will be sustained, or whether it will turn out to be just another development fad. What trajectory will social protection follow, which actors will drive it forward and what will be the main issues and challenges? This article reports on a small foresight study designed to address the question: ‘Where next for social pr…
Taking the Long View
Recognising that many indicators of vulnerability among children, such as malnutrition or poor educational performance, might reflect intergenerational problems has profound implications for the design and implementation of social protection programmes. Treating the symptoms of these problems is of course essential: a malnourished child needs immediate nutritional support and a child who is failing at school needs special attention. But the argum…
The ‘New Famines’
The twentieth century was the worst ever in terms of famine mortality, yet it was also the historical moment when the technical capacity to eradicate famine was first achieved, and when famine was seemingly ended in many historically famine-prone countries -Russia, China, India, Bangladesh.Depressingly, at the start of the twenty-first century, famine persists.It remains endemic in the Horn of Africa -Ethiopia and Sudan have both suffered mass mo…
Entitlements, availability and famine
The food question profits versus people
The political economy of hunger volume III
Theories of Famine
THE NATURE OF FAMINE: Introduction. What is Famine? The Evolution of Famine Theory. THEORIES OF FAMINE: Famine and Climate. The Population Monster. The Entitlement Approach. Famine and Food Markets. Famine Theories Contrasted and Compared. THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF FAMINE: The Management of Natural Resources. Famine and Development. Famine and Government Policy. War and Famine. Famine and International Relations
Goats Before Ploughs
This article draws on the ‘entitlement’ and ‘coping strategies’ literature to argue that consumption smoothing is not the only priority of poor households facing food production shocks or income declines. In selecting from the range of responses available to them, decision makers retain economic and social as well as nutritional objectives, and they will sequence their responses according to the long term costs as well as the immediate returns as…
Food security policy in Africa between disaster relief and structural adjustment
Drought and survival in rural Namibia
The 1992 drought in southern Africa reduced national grain harvests to less than half of 1991 levels, caused substantial livestock mortality and severely compromised rural livelihoods. This paper disaggregates the impact of the drought on three vulnerable socio‐economic groups in Namibia — smallholder crop farmers, livestock rearers and commercial farmworkers. A modified entitlement framework is adopted: as well as examining entitlement‐generatin…
Targeting Transfers
Summaries The case for targeting cash or in?kind transfers to the poor – that it maximises cost?effectiveness and equitable allocation of scarce public resources – is partially offset by the administrative, social and political costs that targeting introduces. This article examines practical applications of three alternative targeting mechanisms: self?targeting, individual assessment, and group characteristics. It finds that current international…
Famine in Africa
Does Social Policy Meet Social Needs
Summaries This article asks whether social policy in the South meets social needs. We argue that in poor countries, social policy as conventionally designed and delivered leaves the needs of the poor inadequately addressed – and identify two key reasons why this is so. The first is that northern models of social provisioning were transplanted to poor countries with little adaptation to local realities; the second arises from the top?down and sect…
Livelihood Insecurity and Social Protection
Risk and vulnerability have been rediscovered as key features of rural livelihoods and poverty, and are currently a focus of policy attention. The poor themselves try to manage uncertainty using a variety of ex‐ante and ex‐post risk management strategies, and through community support systems, but these are both fragile and economically damaging. State interventions working through food, labour or credit markets have proved expensive and unsustai…
Food Security and Nutrition
Sen's Entitlement Approach
Twenty years after Poverty and Famines elaborated the entitlement approach as an innovative and holistic approach to famine analysis, debates about some of its fundamental assertions remain unresolved. This paper examines four limitations acknowledged by Sen himself: starvation by choice, disease-driven rather than starvation-driven mortality, ambiguities in entitlement specification and extra-legal entitlement transfers. It concludes that Sen's …
The Malawi Famine of 2002
The ‘New Famines’
The twentieth century was the worst ever in terms of famine mortality, yet it was also the historical moment when the technical capacity to eradicate famine was first achieved, and when famine was seemingly ended in many historically famine-prone countries -Russia, China, India, Bangladesh.Depressingly, at the start of the twenty-first century, famine persists.It remains endemic in the Horn of Africa -Ethiopia and Sudan have both suffered mass mo…
Destitution in Wollo (Ethiopia)
Conventional approaches to poverty assessment are dominated by narrow measures of current household income, expenditure and consumption. These methodologies fail to capture more complex, multi- dimensional and dynamic realities of chronic poverty, such as asset erosion and livelihood vulnerability. This paper proposes an alternative measure of severe poverty or destitution, defined in terms of subsistence needs, livelihood resources and dependenc…
Climate Change and Food Security
Famine Intensity and Magnitude Scales
Ambiguities in current usage of the term 'famine' have had tragic implications for response and accountability in a number of recent food crises. This paper proposes a new approach to defining famine based on the use of intensity and magnitude scales, where 'intensity' refers to the severity of the crisis at a given location and point in time, while 'magnitude' describes the aggregate impact of a crisis. The scales perform three operations on 'fa…
Too Much Inequality or Too Little? Inequality and Stagnation in Ethiopian Agriculture
The agricultural sector remains our Achilles heel
Introduction
Trends in poverty and destitution in Wollo, Ethiopia 1
According to several studies, poverty in rural Ethiopia has fallen significantly since the early 1990s, thanks to improved governance and economic liberalisation policies. This paper presents several arguments that challenge this view. The first questions the methodological foundations of the data from which these positive trends are derived: we argue that the original sampling frame was too small and unrepresentative to provide a basis for extra…
Introduction
Whose (Transformative) Reality Counts? A Reply to Aoo et al
Social Protection for Transformation
A Universal Social Minimum
Political science (41 works) · Economics (38 works) · Geography (23 works) · Law (23 works) · Livelihood (23 works) · Economic growth (22 works) · Social protection (22 works) · Poverty, Education, and Child Welfare (19 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Business (18 works)