Context

Since the rains failed in 2021, Somalia’s rivers and wells have dried up, more than 3 million livestock have died, and harvests all over the country have repeatedly failed.

As a result of this crisis and other challenges, such as rising inter-clan violence and an intensive campaign against an insurgency, people have fled from their rural homes to urban centres in record-breaking numbers. There are now an estimated 2,400 internally displaced persons (IDP) camps hosting over 1.5 million people in Somalia. A lack of adequate shelter, over-crowded conditions, and limited access to basic services such as water and healthcare make those who have fled one of the most vulnerable groups in the ongoing crisis. 

Five seasons of failed rainy seasons created famine-like conditions, leaving 5 million people in acute food insecurity, placing more than 2 million children at risk of malnutrition, and causing the deaths of as many as 43,000 people in 2022 alone.

Approach to Sequencing, Layering and Integration 

While BRCiS’ resilience-building activities are usually sequenced, layered, and integrated (SLI), the drought response offered an opportunity to be more intentional about articulating and following this approach in an emergency setting. Collectively, the response involved both direct support to households and other interventions focused on building the resilience of Somali communities and underlying systems. 

Sequencing: By beginning with more traditional humanitarian interventions such as the direct distribution of goods and services from NGOs, primarily funded by the UK Government’s Internal Relief Fund, and gradually expanding to incorporate more integrated services delivered through market activities and market systems approaches when USAID’s Economic Growth Department stepped in, BRCiS’ overall emergency response was—by default—sequenced. A further aim was to implement activities in a given community in a planned order, beginning with health and nutrition, then MPCA, followed by other interventions.   

Given the limited financing available relative to the extent of need, alongside the humanitarian priority of saving lives in the emergency, community-level and household targeting—both focused on supporting the most vulnerable—was re-done at every phase. This meant that communities that improved sufficiently at one phase might “graduate out” of the emergency response while those that were most vulnerable received repeated support throughout.  

Layering: In many cases, the activities were also layered, such that communities that received MPCA were also in the catchment areas for the water interventions, health and nutrition assistance, and/or market interventions. Given limitations to available funding and the extent of need, other communities received just one intervention at a time.  

Integration: Since the sequencing and layering elements of the response were multi-sectoral and the BRCiS Consortium represents a coordinated group of implementers, the drought response was also integrated. The BRCiS Consortium has historically organized its activities by geography, rather than type of intervention. This has proven to reduce overlap and allow each member to develop long-term relationships with the communities with whom it works, a central component of the BRCiS approach and crucial aspect of the drought response. Each Consortium Member is responsible for targeting and implementing activities within its designated area. 

Building the resilience of the market system: In addition to adopting market-based activities, the Consortium increasingly adopted a market systems strengthening approach, adapting the way in which it implemented its programming. Wherever possible, it supported existing market actors and systems, for instance facilitating public-private partnerships (PPPs) for the construction of sustainable water infrastructure and engaging with agro-dealers to provide seeds to households, rather than doing so directly. See more examples in the buttons below. 

Targeting

In addition to targeting the most vulnerable communities for community and area-level interventions, each round, BRCiS Members used a community-based targeting approach to re-target households for MPCA to ensure that life-saving cash was always directed to the families who were most in need.

BRCiS conducted continual monitoring throughout its emergency drought response, including baseline, post-distribution (PDM), and endline surveys of each phase.

Consistent with findings from the response’s Phase II evaluation, monitoring data from each phase repeatedly showed that the BRCiS activities had an extraordinary, positive short-term impact on MPCA households, many of whom also received other services. This represents an important achievement in a situation in which the primary objective was to save lives. 

Furthermore, BRCiS managed to enter into seven hard-to-reach areas and provide emergency assistance to 1,380 households, almost none of which had received any formal support for at least a year, probably longer. 

Unfortunately, especially in the earlier phases, most of the effects began to—or completely—wore off within three months, as the response was designed to be life-saving, the most direct interventions at the household level—the MPCA—were intended to last only a few months and the drought’s sustained effects were severe.

The same trend of impacts diminishing by endline was evident in later phases, though often to a lesser extent, and in some cases, the positive effects were sustained. For instance, in Phases III and IV, families’ reliance on coping strategies continued to decline not just after the intervention but even through the endline.

Still, at the end of Phase IV in September 2023, 25% of households had a poor food consumption score, which the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) categorises as emergency level or worse, and 23% were either struggling a lot or could not meet their basic needs.

Most vulnerable groups

For the most part, the results for vulnerable groups—such as female-headed households, households with a person with a disability, and people who view themselves as internally displaced—tracked closely with the overall trend of rapid, short-term improvements that began to wear off by the endline of each phase.

Explore the chart to see some of the exceptions and nuances in this data, for instance the fact that in Phases III and IV, non-IDPs’ reliance on coping strategies continued to decline through endline, suggesting a more sustained impact, while IDPs’ reliance on coping strategies began to increase after the post-distribution monitoring survey.

This is consistent with the widespread recognition that recently displaced people are especially vulnerable during droughts, as displacement separates people from their homes, physical assets, and social support networks, undermining their resilience capacities and ability to recover when drought conditions ease. This fact is what initially prompted BRCiS to expand the drought response from its usual exclusive focus in rural areas to include urban and peri-urban IDP sites despite mixed opinions among CMU and Member staff. It also informed the design of the BRCiS-funded and e4c-led Nutrition and Mortality Surveillance System.

Impact of Sequencing, Layering, and Integration

Interviews with the Consortium suggest that although the sequencing, layering, and integration was challenging to implement in the midst of an emergency, where it worked, it had a strong impact. Relationships and infrastructure built during BRCiS II laid important groundwork that Consortium Members could leverage and that supported community resilience. Innovative and market-based activities, like the kitchen gardens, were even more successful than expected.

Sequencing: Comparing one-time versus repeated touchpoints 

In practice, sequencing was done whenever it was feasible. However, given the complexities associated with responding in crisis situations, such as fund distribution delays, supply chain issues, and the need to respond to immediate emergencies as they arise, sequencing within a phase did not always occur.

A core feature of BRCiS’ usual resilience programming, implemented throughout BRCiS I and BRCiS II from 2013-2022 is the creation of social capital, diversification of voices in local leadership, and strengthening of community structures, such as the Community Resilience Committees (CRCs) and Water Management Committees. Another major feature, especially of BRCiS II and the focus of the upcoming BRCiS III, is the creation, rehabilitation, and management of water sources.

As the drought unfolded, it was hypothesized that BRCiS’ prior resilience-building work would make the communities it has supported in recent years more resilient to the drought. BRCiS CMU, Consortium Members, and Community Resilience Committees all report that this did occur and that sequenced programming had a significant impact on BRCiS II communities. While there is some quantitative data to suggest this could be true, because the targeting changed each phase, it is not possible to verify from the quantitative data with certainty.

Two of the most effective qualities of the BRCiS Consortium are its eagerness to learn and agility in adapting its activities accordingly. The Consortium’s flexibility and the donors’ flexible, emergency grants enabled Members to effectively provide services to their communities.

While the CMU worked to encourage collaboration and learning amongst Consortium Members, the Members did not always have the time to engage and share their experiences on the ground with one another amidst the demands of coordinating a crisis response. Similarly, Consortium Members were not always able to absorb learnings gleaned from the learning products published by the CMU. Therefore, in order to facilitate rapid uptake, the CMU incorporated lessons learned from studies and experiences of other Members into their directives. Additionally, one of the CMU’s learning products stood out as having prompted significant change amongst the entire Consortium and beyond: the study on Community Water Subsidies.

Given the extreme need in Somalia and the desire of multiple donors to support BRCiS’ effort, BRCiS' emergency drought response became a strong example of how multiple donors with different interests can come together to achieve something greater than any of the donors initially expected. For instance, although BRCiS has been implementing SLI for some time, the UK Government and QFFD’s focus on humanitarian programming, combined with USAID’s attention to markets pushed the Consortium to strengthen its overall SLI approach, especially the integration component, and apply it more fully in an emergency setting.

In retrospect, BRCiS’ sequenced, layered, and integrated emergency drought response achieved the primary goals in any humanitarian crisis: saving lives and reducing suffering.

At the same time, the depth and extent of this catastrophic drought and limited available funding meant that in each phase, only the most immediate, short-term needs of the most vulnerable people could be met. While there were rapid improvements after each distribution, by the Phase IV endline in late September 2023, 25% of Phase IV households still had a poor food consumption score. This does not even capture the extent to which the vast number of people deemed—through a difficult and heart-wrenching process—not needy enough continue to struggle to survive.

Despite the need to build longer-run resilience, the dire circumstances meant that the Consortium was constantly responding to new crises, leaving little time to collaborate to integrate learnings, build capacities of the Members, or fully implement market systems-based approaches. While it can be difficult for implementers to build the technical capacity and relationships to implement new activities within six-month emergency funding cycles, this experience demonstrated that the Consortium is well-placed and motivated to try new things, even in complex emergency contexts, and that a multi-donor relationship can help fast-track the adoption of innovation in such situations.

Continuing to invest in learning and adaptation strategies and systems, members’ technical capacity in novel ways of working, and nurturing local networks with the private sector and other market actors during times of relative stability—for instance between now and the next major drought—will enable BRCiS and other stakeholders to mobilize even more smoothly and effectively in innovative ways during future emergency scale-ups.

Still, there is general agreement that because the financing for these interventions was received from USAID Somalia’s Economic Growth Department, a funder that does not provide humanitarian relief in its remit, the market systems approach did not—as was feared—divert resources away from saving lives but rather augmented the emergency activities.

Furthermore, stakeholders—including the BRCiS CMU, Members, and donors—agree that protecting the resilience of Somalia’s markets and economy is the only way to rebuild in a way that strengthens the resilience of the Somali people and reduces dependence on humanitarian aid.

Based on this experience, there is a collective sense of excitement and optimism about the potential of building capacity to adopt more integrated and market systems-based service delivery approaches moving forward, including through engaging further with market specialists, especially now that drought conditions are easing and people and organizations can start making plans for the future once more.