Abstract
The ‘new variant famine’ hypothesis suggests AIDS is contributing to food insecurity in southern Africa. Proposed causal mechanisms include a loss of livelihood assets and skills, brought about through AIDS′ impacts on children’s access to inherited property and intergenerationally-transferred knowledge. This paper employs a sustainable livelihoods framework to examine how AIDS is impacting on young people’s access to assets and skills in two southern African countries: Malawi and Lesotho. Drawing on qualitative research with rural youth, the paper shows that AIDS affects some young people’s access to some livelihood assets, but does not do so in a systematic or predictable way, nor are its impacts invariably negative. The broader cultural and institutional context is of key importance. The paper also demonstrates the need for the sustainable livelihoods framework to take greater account of the temporalities of livelihoods, and in particular the significance of lifecourse and generation.
Highlights
Southern Africa’s exceptionally high HIV prevalence and recurrent food crises prompted de Waal and Whiteside (2003) to hypothesise a ‘new variant famine’ (NVF) in which inability to access food is driven by the effects of AIDS
This paper presents findings from research that explored how AIDS, in interaction with other factors, is affecting young rural southern Africans’ livelihood activities, opportunities and choices
Since the NVF hypothesis focuses on the effects of AIDS on livelihood coping strategies, and the consequent outcomes for food security, in this paper we draw on the sustainable livelihoods framework (SLF) developed by Chambers and Conway (1991) and subsequently elaborated by others (e.g. Bebbington, 1999; Scoones, 1998)
Summary
Southern Africa’s exceptionally high HIV prevalence and recurrent food crises prompted de Waal and Whiteside (2003) to hypothesise a ‘new variant famine’ (NVF) in which inability to access food is driven by the effects of AIDS. Southern Africa suffers the world’s highest adult HIV prevalence rates, ranging up to 27.7% (UNAIDS, 2014) This coincidence of AIDS and food insecurity led de Waal and Whiteside (2003) to hypothesise a ‘new variant famine’ (NVF) caused by the pandemic. de Waal and Whiteside (2003) suggested four drivers: changing dependency patterns, loss of assets and skills, an increased burden of care and the vicious interaction between AIDS and malnutrition The second of these drivers implicates AIDS0 impacts on young people (as future food producers and household managers), and is the most likely to threaten long-term food security. The research reported in this paper was undertaken to explore holistically how AIDS affects young people’s potential to participate in sustainable food-secure livelihoods in varying geographical/livelihood contexts (Pinder, 2003), and in particular how AIDS affects access to livelihood assets across generations
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