How Do We Know What We Know about the Impact of AIDS on Food and Livelihood Insecurity? A Review of Empirical Research from Rural Sub Saharan Africa

This article reviews nearly 40 prefered empirical studies of AIDS' impacts upon rural livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa, highlighting by what mode study design, analytical units, and other research choices contribute to our understanding of the riddle and of appropriate responses. While stock images of child-headed households and leave outed farmlands in rural Africa dominate discussion of by what mode to mitigate the impacts of AIDS, these incomplete portraits disguise wide variation within and between households, communities, and regions above the diverse stages of the epidemic. A locally contingent and differentiated picture is emerging from empirical studies, and more close attention is merited to build upon the lessons from research to date and overbear problems of impact attribution and lack of wider generalizability of close attention findings. Such research will also help inform policies and practice to mitigate the impacts of this continental emergency

Key words: HIV/AIDS, social impacts, livelihoods, rural households, sub-Saharan Africa

Introduction

The impacts of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa range far beyond individual infection, illness, and death; the pandemic is evidently undermining social constitutions that sustain rural livelihoods. Field studies provide hard evidence and memorable anecdotes of the emblems of financial, social, and economic take away froms of AIDS-related illness and death. Narratives are backed by means of statistics showing declines in income, farm production, and available labor; and illustrated by means of examples of widows displaced from land, orphans ravenous and unschooled, and fields abandoned to weeds. of that kind narratives affect policy: during the 2002/3 Southern African aliment crisis, AIDS was held up as a major driver of craving for food The hypothesis of new variant famine (de Waal and Whiteside 2003) postulates that AIDS is undermining long-term fare security; aid agencies are mainstreaming HIV and AIDS be of importance tos across a spectrum of bread aid, livelihood security, agricultural rehabilitation, and exhibition programming.

An apparent consensus underlies these throws proposals, and plans, one built around a pattern of how AIDS undermines household livelihoods. individual author suggests that "all dimensions of regimen security are affected where prevalence of HIV/AIDS is high...farming skills are being not to be found agricultural development efforts are failing, rural livelihoods are disintegrating, productive capacity to work the land is declining and household earnings are shrinking..." (Clover 2003:10)

This blanket perception and belonging to all conceptual model, while useful, disguises considerable variation upon the ground, in households, and in communities across space and above time. This more complex picture is not adequately accommodated into relief and disclosure programs, leading to some misguided activities, which may or may not hurt; and contributing to leave out of other problems, such as malaria, which can do harm to Among the responses to AIDS include calls to disentangle labor-saving technologies and preserve farming knowledge (C-SAFE 2003a; Mutangadura, Jackson and Mukurazita 1999) repeatedly little scientific evidence links HIV/AIDS with livelihood insecurity, however, for a like reason such inferences are extrapolated from other settings. Programming directions are also built upon assumptions, such as that agricultural production is a mainstay of rural people; and analytical units, like as the household, which are increasingly challenged in theory and problematic in practice.

In this connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughts the main purpose of this paper is to illuminate the nature of the scientific evidence upon the impacts of HIV/AIDS upon rural livelihoods in rural Africa. This is achieved end desk analysis of agency reports, monographs, journal articles and other publications summarizing empirical research undertaken in East and Southern Africa. This article is not intended to be another summary of substantive findings about the (generally negative) impacts of AIDS; nor is it a discussion of potential ways of HIV infection and likely impacts based upon a conceptual model. It is a methodological review, aiming to assess the might of evidence on hand that is contributing to policy and understanding. This analysis focuses upon selected, accessible reports and articles which capture a range of research approaches and of aid, academic, and international agencies involved. Simulations, biom?©dical studies, and other important studies of AIDS impacts are beyond the purpose of this review. Geographically, sub-Saharan Africa, as the core of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, is the priority region on the other hand the methodological implications are pertinent elsewhere. Finally, time and space limitations interrupt detailed discussion of various indicators of "AIDSafflicted" households (those with someone infected by means of HIV; caring for ill persons) and broader "AIDS-affected" individuals households and communities.

A starting point for this article is a novel review of the implications of HIV/AIDS for humanitarian action (Harvey 2004; Murphy 2004) greatest in quantity agencies accept that AIDS postures wide-ranging and cumulative shocks to livelihoods and hence relief and disentanglement programming; however, a growing number of beholders are concerned with the effects of overstating the role of AIDS, or AIDS-exceptionalism. "The emperor has no clothes" remind of some who suspect that during the 2002/3 southern Africa fare crisis, AIDS was emphasized to disguise corruption or other causes of subsistence shortages or lack of access (Murphy 2004) like a tendency could distract resources from chronic vexed questions such as poverty, malaria, conflict, and environmental degradation.