The Role of Social Safety Nets in Community Resilience and Performance of Food Security Projects

This paper examines the role of social safety nets in community resilience and performance of food security projects in Loima sub-County of Turkana County, Kenya. The study was conducted in Loima Sub-County which is in Turkana County of Kenya. The study area is among the poorest in Kenya due to frequent droughts, insecurity and low investments by successive regimes. The study employed semi-structured questionnaires, interview guides and observation check lists to gather data and information on the study variables. A total of 491 households were sampled across 11 sub-locations. The study findings showed that social safety nets have weak positive influence on community resilience and performance of food security projects (r² = R2 = 0.1757). This implied that social safety nets explained 17.57 % of the variation of performance of food security projects while the other percentage was explained by other variables different from social safety nets. The overall F statistic of F = 30.49 (p=0.05) was statistically significant since at (p = 0.000 less than 0.05) hence was suitable to analyze the relationship between social safety nets and performance of food security projects. The study found out that the amount of cash transferred from the social safety nets helped vulnerable households to purchase consumable goods but did not enhance livelihood diversification through ownership of productive assets. Resources from the social safety nets were not sufficient to cover every vulnerable household, they were influenced by targeting mechanist, institutional coordination as well as both local and national politics. The study concluded that due to frequent disasters as well as underdevelopment of infrastructure in Loima Sub-County, social safety nets alone were not sufficient to address household food insecurity in long-term. Therefore, the study recommended the need to link the social safety nets with other development programs for long-term resilience building to food insecurity.