District by a ration equivalent to 12 kg maize and 3 kg beans per person per month,  and

subtracting the 1996/7 local harvest in maize and beans. The implied assumptions are that:

  each District, and the Region overall, needs to be self sufficient in maize and bean production

(no account is taken of income or trade, even between Districts within the Region); and that

  maize and beans comprise the whole of the basic staple diet, disregarding the importance of

other foods such as root crops, cooking bananas and livestock products.

In fact the Regional balance sheet, even under these clearly unrealistic assumptions, shows a

small surplus in maize production from the 1996/97 harvest, and a deficit in bean production of

almost  equal size (around 8,500 MT).  Yet the Region's relief food request was nearly 33,000 MT.

This is because the actual needs assessment was based not on the production / consumption

balance (despite the data presented on this), but on the lists of   affected population  collected

from each village in each District (following the PMO's nationwide call to mobilize against famine,

and the directive on registering people under the three categories).   Over estimation of relief

needs is built into this calculation at several points:

All Districts are included, except for Arusha town itself.

All three categories of people (including those able to buy food) seem to have been counted in

this overall assessment figure, although  there was certainly an intention to distinguish

between the categories during actual distributions.

The total number of   affected  people (22% of the Region's population) was then multiplied by

a full monthly relief ration of maize and beans (12 kg maize and 2 kg beans), again implicitly

assuming no other food sources.

  The period of relief need was estimated at seven months (December to June), compared to

WFP's planning period of two months for bimodal and four months for unimodal areas.

Given these calculation methods, it is easy to understand the huge gap between the Region's

estimate of food needs and the WFP's planning figures, shown in Table 8.

Further implementation problems with the three category registration system were raised in

Arusha: firstly, it led to the registration of the entire population of listed villages (since everyone

falls in one or other of the categories), which in turn raised expectations that everyone would be

Table 8:  Arusha Region ~ District (stage 2) targeting of WFP drought relief

(MT)

Original

Original

Revised

Actual

assessment

Allocation

allocation

distributions

District

(Nov 97) 

1

(Dec 97) 

2

(Mar 98) 

3

(Jan Apr 98) 

4

Arusha (town)

0

0

0

0

Arumeru

               7,700

0

0

0

Babati

               2,512

0

0

0

Hanang

               2,306

0

0

0

Karatu

               2,709

                  388

                  387

                    96

Kiteto

               1,022

                  146

                  228

                  200

Mbulu

               1,848

                  256

                  264

                    71

Monduli

               6,489

                  894

                  927

               1,117

Ngorongoro

               6,146

                  881

               1,094

                  711

Simanjiro

               1,855

                  651

                  651

                  611

Regional total

             32,587

               3,216

               3,551

               2,807

Sources:

1

Arusha Regional Commissioner's Office, ref 1

2

WFP EMOP distribution plan, ref 42

3

WFP EMOP update, March 98

4

WFP EMOP Monitoring Report, July 98, ref 46

A 13