ABSTRACT
Although there are important similarities between the administration of food for nutrition projects in all four countries, the complexity of the operation varies widely between Botswana, which is the simplest, and Upper Volta, the most complex. In Botswana there is only one donor, the World Food Programme (WFP), and this undoubtedly simplifies matters. However, the government organisation of food for nutrition and the projects it supports is also well organised. Responsibility is split between a ‘distributive’ function performed by the Institutional Food Programme (IFP) which is in charge of logistics for all food aid,
and a ‘professional’ function undertaken by the Ministries of Health, Education and Local Government and Lands which with the district councils run the MCH clinics and primary schools at which food aid is distributed. A number of non-governmental organisations such as the Botswana Council of Women and YWCA are also involved because they run voluntary feeding centres which supplement the clinics as distribution points for MCH rations. This split between the handling of food aid and running the programmes into which it is incorporated has been an operational success. Food aid control is a fairly selfcontained exercise, and the IFP has developed a reasonable degree of expertise. Delivery delays certainly do occur, and might sometimes have been avoided if the recipient institutions were responsible for collecting their own supplies: it is not unknown for an institution to be short of food even though the IFP depot in the same town has adequate supplies, because of a shortage of IFP transport. However, the institutions that would benefit most from such a switch would probably be those close to the regional IFP depots, while those in remote areas would probably be worse off. Possibly the most important organisational danger for the IFP arises precisely because it does perform a fairly selfcontained activity and therefore does not come into frequent contact with other ministries. It has responsibility for all food aid, but it is its role in emergency relief that attracts the highest level of attention. During the lulls between the periodic droughts that Botswana experiences, it is easy for the government, preoccupied by more pressing affairs, to neglect the IFP apparatus.
