RURAL-URBAN LINKAGES - Guinea

8/2/2019 RURAL-URBAN LINKAGES - Guinea

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KEY MESSAGES

I Rural-urban linkages in Guinea are surprisingly

strong even among poor households.

Development planners must analyse urban and

rural contexts as one unified economic sphere.

I Rural-urban linkages are characterized by

pronounced seasonality. Urban migrants send

cash to rural relatives in the hunger season, and

rural producers send food immediately

post-harvest, as expected, but there are

important exceptions to the rule.

I Food insecurity persists even among households

with strong rural-urban linkages. Both rural and

urban households exercised a wide range ofpotentially harmful coping strategies.

I Without stable underlying livelihood

systems, strong linkages may only succeed

in redistributing poverty. Strengthening

livelihoods is an important complement to

leveraging linkages for sustained food security.

I Understanding that migration is not only driven

by economic distress but also by intangible

factors like the lure of the city for young people,

is important in order to design interventions that

work with the priorities and decisions of the

poor, instead of trying to change them.

I Key interventions for leveraging rural-urban

linkages to improve food security include:

providing information and skill training to new

migrants; increasing the value and utility of

transfers by taking advantage of the seasonal

pattern of linkages; making flows of cash, food,

and goods more efficient by decreasing the costand providing secure means of transport.

RURAL-URBAN LINKAGESGuinea

Full reports available from www.actionagainsthunger.org.uk

January 2012

Action Against Hunger www.actionagainsthunger.org.uk

Action Against Hunger | ACF International is an international humanitarian organisation committed to ending childhunger. Recognised as a leader in the fight against malnutrition, ACF works to save the lives of malnourished children

while providing communities with sustainable access to safe water and long-term solutions to hunger. With 30 yearsof expertise in emergency situations of conflict, natural disaster and chronic food insecurity, ACF runs life-savingprogrammes in some 40 countries benefitting nearly 5 million people each year.


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RURAL-URBAN LINKAGES IN GUINEA2

The Republic of Guinea, a nation of over ten million

people on the West African coast, is blessed with

abundant natural resources. A long history of political

and economic instability, however, has left parts of

the country food-insecure. The aftereffects of conflicts

in the neighboring countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone,

and Cte dIvoire, as well as Guineas ongoing own

internal struggles to establish democracy, have

complicated policy efforts to maintain steady

economic growth and create a strong social safety net.

Both poverty and severe poverty (the percentage ofpeople living under $2/day and $1.25/day, respectively)

appear to be increasing over the past decade; in 2007,

nearly 70% of the population was classified as poor.

According to the United Nations Human Development

Index, which combines indicators of education, life

expectancy, and income into a composite index of

well-being, Guinea ranks 178th out of 187 countries.

More than two out of every five preschool children in

Guinea are chronically undernourished.

Although undernutrition is widespread throughout the

country, the situation is generally worse in rural areas,

as figure 1 shows. The stunting rate the percentage

of children whose height is well below what would be

expected given their age has remained about

one-third higher in rural Guinea, and the gap has

narrowed only slightly in recent years. Furthermore,

undernutrition is worsening in both the city and

country.

For decades, Guineas capital city of Conakry has been

a magnet for rural people seeking a better life. Over

one-fifth of the countrys population now lives there.

Rarely, however, do entire families leave together for

the city. Instead, certain members migrate to find

work while others stay behind to cultivate farmland,

keep livestock, and seek other opportunities in the

rural economy or simply because they are

constrained from moving by age or physical infirmity.

However, the divided families often maintain strong

links, exchanging cash, food, consumer goods, and

FIGURE 1: CHRONIC UNDERNUTRITION IN GUINEA

Percentage

ofChildren

Stunted

Data from nationally representative surveys included in the WorldHealth Organizations Database on Child Growth and Malnutrition.

50

45

40

35

30

25

20

15

10

5

0

Urban

Rural

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

FIGURE 2: MAP OF ACF ACTIVITIES

Kindia

Conakry

Legend Research Location ACF Areas of Operations

Shiguin

Kissidougou

Nzrkor

Conakry

ACF has been working in Guinea since 1995 in GuineaForestiere, the south eastern provinces of the country,implementing an integrated food security, nutrition andWaSH program. In 2007, ACF became operational inConakry implementing nutrition and food securityactivities alongside a cholera prevention program.


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RURAL-URBAN LINKAGES IN GUINEA 3

information. Many migrants return during the planting

and harvest seasons to help on the farms, and rural

households continue to send other family members to

their urban relatives to seek schooling or employment.

In this briefing paper, we present the results of a

recent ACF study conducted in October 2011, during

the early harvest season, on the relationship betweenthese urban-rural linkages and household food security

in Guinea.

The methodology included three components:

1 A quantitative survey about the strength and types

of rural-urban linkages with 86 households, 39 in

neighborhoods around Conakry and 47 in the rural

areas surrounding the smaller urban center

of Kindia;

2 Participatory livelihoods profiling in both areas with

members of various wealth groups;

3 Focus group discussions with selected subgroups of

urban migrants and rural households who had sent

migrants, including mothers of young children.

Interviews with community key informants, NGO

officers, and government officials on topics of

particular interest were also conducted.

The following pages look at the type of linkages that

exist, how linkages affect livelihoods and poor

households ability to cope in times of food insecurity,

and the implications of these findings for organizationsand policymakers fighting hunger and undernutrition

in Guinea.

TYPES OF URBAN-RURAL LINKAGESSeveral forms of linkages between migrants and rural

households are important in Guinea. Flows of cash and

goods are especially dense, as the graph above shows.

Out of 86 households interviewed, more than

three-quarters reported sending food to or receiving

significant quantities of food from their relatives in

the past year. Although the majority of food transfer

volume was in the rural to urban direction and as

expected, mostly in the weeks immediately following

the harvest season an equal number of urban

migrants sent food as received it. This was largely due

to the fact that rice and other grains are cheaper in

Conakry during the saison de soudure (hunger

season), the months preceding the new harvest when

last years food stocks have begun to run out. Most of

the migrants food shipments were sent during this

time to cover their rural relatives shortfall.

Cash flows are also important, with nearly two-thirds

of households receiving or giving money in the past

year (see box opposite). As in the case of food, the

expectation that cash would predominately flow in a

single direction in this case, from urban to rural,

given the depth of income poverty in the countryside

was supported by the research, but again with

important qualifications. Those rural households who

are economically able to do so send considerable

amounts of money to migrant relatives who have

FIGURE 3: FLOWS OF CASH AND GOODSBETWEEN HHs

%o

fHHssendingorreceivingin

the

pastyear

100

90

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

Interviews were conducted in the neighborhoods of Behanzin, Tombolia,and Wanindara in Conakry, and the villages of Sguya, Mamou, andBamaya near Kindia.

Clothe

s

DurableGoods

Livestock

Inputs

Food

Cash

TYPE

62.8 76.7 20.9 34.9 24.3 46.5


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recently left, as well as those enrolled in school. This

latter consideration is important; about half of all

rural families reported that their relatives originally

left the village to pursue better or higher levels of

education, although, sadly, many are forced to drop

out because of economic difficulties.

In addition to food and cash, family members also send

each other agricultural inputs (especially seeds and

tools), poultry and small livestock, durable goods like

radios and mobile phones, and clothing. Although sentless frequently than food or cash, the value of these

transfers can be considerable. Many of these goods

are sent as gifts around the time of Ramadan.

Less tangible forms of links also persist between urban

and rural households. Nearly half of all households

surveyed reported visiting their relatives at least four

times in the past year. Among urban migrants who still

owned land back in their village, half returned home

occasionally to help with agricultural activities,

especially planting and harvest. Communication

between relatives is frequent, with more than three

I came to Conakry two years ago, after

my mother died in the village. My father

and I were very poor; we had a few

hectares of land, but little money to

make it productive. I came to the city

because I thought if I could get a few

more years of school, I would be able to

find a job and help my father back

home. But life here in Conakry becamevery tough; there are few jobs available,

and I had nowhere to turn. I had to drop

out of school to try and find work

sometimes Im able to send a few kilo-

grams of peanuts, or seeds for planting,

back to my father, but never cash. In

fact, he had to send me a little money

this year to help me.

23 year-old focus group discussion participant,

Wanindara neighborhood, Conakry


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FIGURE 4: COPING STRATEGIES IN THE PAST MONTH

Go entire days without eating

Reduce the number of meals eaten in a day

Limit adult food consumption to let children eat

Reduce food portion size to save supplies

Buy food on credit

Borrow food or borrow money to buy food

Forced to eat less preferred foods

0 20 40 60 80 100

% of HHs doing this at least 3 times/week

Urban Rural

LIVELIHOODS, LINKAGES,

AND THE ABILITY TO COPEThe previous section suggested that strong rural-urbanlinkages could help protect families during times of

stress. Yet the nearly one hundred low-income

households with strong linkages interviewed for this

study still faced serious difficulties in coping with both

one-off shocks and chronic food insecurity. Figure 4

above shows the percentage of rural and urban families

surveyed that were forced to exercise a range of

potentially harmful coping strategies at least three

times a week over the past month in order to meet

their basic needs.

out of five families contacting relatives at least once

a week by telephone or text message. The majority

of households reported frequently sending messages

using more informal means, often through word of

mouth, transmitted by other people traveling between

the city and countryside. These same people oftenserve as couriers for cash and goods as well.

The overall picture is thus one of surprisingly strong

linkages between urban migrants and their rural

relatives, especially given the prevailing poverty levels

in the city and the villages, the insecure means

available to send cash and goods, and the costs in time

and money of maintaining personal contact.

Development interventions are often planned with a

view to either the urban or rural economy in isolation,

but the two worlds are intimately connected, which

may offer opportunities for planners and policymakers

to leverage interventions implemented in one context

to produce results in the other.


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FIGURE 5: SEASONAL CALENDAR: CONAKRY

FIGURE 6: HOUSEHOLD SOURCES OF EARNED INCOME FIGURE 7: HOUSEHOLD ANNUAL EXPENDITURES

Interestingly, the results indicate that poor urban

households were slightly worse off in the past month

than poor rural families. This probably reflects the

fact that the time of our survey, October 2011, was

during the early part of the harvest season, when food

availability in the countryside is better than at other

times of the year. However, the percentage of poor

RAINY SEASON

Not much work availablefor men Feb-Apr, search

for casual jobs, usereserves and try to

save for rainy season

Some temporarywork for men

available as a me-chanic, driver, orin construction;women market

fish (year-round)

Women marketpeanuts, manioc,

vegetables in May-Jul;fruits, sugar, rice andother grains are addedin Aug-Dec; men work

small garden plots

Diarrhea, acute respiratoryinfections, malaria,

typhoid, and dysentry allincrease greatly in therainy season, especially

among children

Return to thevillage for theharvest; somework in thecity making

salt andcharcoal

Marketing increasesaround the time ofRamadan; women

become involved insales of clothes and

durable goods

39%

37%

11%

13%

36%

11%

19%14%

households forced to utilize coping strategies is high

in both Conakry and in rural areas.

This harmful coping behavior occurs despite the fact

that all of the households in the sample maintained

strong rural-urban linkages. So why are strong linkages

unable to mitigate food insecurity to an adequate

Petty trade offoodstuffs

Property rentals

Non-foodpetty trade

Casual labour

Staple foods

Other

Entertainment

Clothes

Household items

Education

HealthNon-staple foods

6%

5%

8%

1%

JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC


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extent? The answer is found in the fragility of

livelihoods and health systems in both urban and rural

areas.

The figures opposite illustrate the activities of poor

households in Conakry over the course of a typical

year, as well as their income and expenditure patterns.

As the calendar shows, families are engaged in diverselivelihoods, but nearly all of them are extremely

unstable. The first pie chart opposite shows that close

to 90% of earned income is derived from either petty

trade, mostly of agricultural products, or casual labor.

The small percentage obtained from property rentals

refers to small plots of land or rooms in houses rented

out on a temporary basis.

Figure 7 opposite also hints at the vulnerability of

urban livelihoods. The households we interviewed

spent nearly half of their income on foods, mostly on

staples like rice and manioc. This high percentage

suggests that little income is available for capital

investments (e.g. property, machinery, education,

land) or as a buffer against potential shocks. An

additional one-fifth of income is spent on health care,

mostly curative care during the rainy reason for

diarrheal diseases, malaria, acute respiratory

infections, and other serious illnesses.

This latter point is very important. Based on our

discussions with mothers of young children, healthcare is a constant source of worry for families. Chronic

illness appears to be an important cause of poor child

nutritional status, resulting largely from unsafe water

and sanitation systems, weak access to preventative

health services, and suboptimal hygiene practices. In

fact, mothers expressed a much greater preoccupation

with the ability of their children to stay healthy enough

to have an appetite and not lose what they have eaten

to diarrheal diseases than the households ability to

obtain enough food for the children. While most

households affirm that the access to and quality of

health care in the city is better than in the village,

high costs not only the price of medical care but

also the time costs involved in seeking, waiting for,

and receiving attention prevents many mothers from

seeking treatment for their children.

Social networks are markedly different, in both

negative and positive ways, in the city than in the

countryside. Our interviewees lamented the breakdown

of traditional support networks in the city, whereextended families are not present and neighbors are

less likely to be close relations or friends. However,

in one sense the city does offer a stronger type of

safety net. According to our informants nearly every

family in the village is likely to be affected in times

of economic crisis, and thus the destitute have no

immediate source of emergency support. In contrast,

shocks are less likely to have such a uniform impact

on city neighborhoods; there will remain some

households that are able to support their neighbors in

extremely dire circumstances.


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Livelihoods in rural areas are as tenuous as those in

the city. As the seasonal calendar above indicates,

there is generally one long growing season in the rural

areas around Kindia, and so a single pest or disease

outbreak or a prolonged dry period at the wrong time

in the growing cycle can have devastating effects on

year-round food security. The families in this

agro-ecological zone are heavily dependent on rice.

The traditional variety of rice has a long growing

FIGURE 8: SEASONAL CALENDAR: RURAL AREAS SURROUNDING KINDIA

FIGURE 9: HOUSEHOLD SOURCES OF EARNED INCOME FIGURE 10: HOUSEHOLD SOURCES OF FOOD

RAINY SEASON

JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC

Preparation of fields for plant-ing: cleaning, plowing. Prepareseedlings for transplanting. Findlivestock who have been allowed

to free graze for pasture andwater in non-growing season

Harvest of rice,millet, sorghum(major grains)

Planting of manioc,millet, maize,sorghum, okra

and other crops.Construction ofbarriers to keep

livestock from fields

As in the city, diarrhea,acute respiratory

infections, malaria,typhoid and dysentry allincrease greatly in therainy season, especially

among children

Harvestbegins; first

peanuts, thentraditionallong-seasonrice in Dec

Weeding and pest controlin fields. By late August,

first harvest begins Chinese short season rice,

millet, vegetables.Continues into Sep and Oct

68%19%

32%

27%

20%

season, with the harvest not beginning until December.

To shorten the hunger season, families plant other

grains as well as a short-season variety of rice (Chinese

rice), which can be harvested as early as the end of

August. However, this improved variety is heavily

dependent on fertilizer and water inputs. As a result,

many families borrow during the growing season to buy

inputs and assure a viable harvest of Chinese rice,

increasing the risk of debt should the crop fail. It is

9%Own crops

Market

Other

Food aid

Own livestockproducts

Wild foods

Food for work

Agriculturalproduct sales

Other

Casual labour

Livestockproduct sales

Petty trade

1%

3%

2%1%

10%

8%


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My children are always sick.

The worst illness is malaria; it strikes us

almost the entire year-round. And often

when the children get malaria or fevers,

they also get other sicknesses, especially

diarrhea. When a child is severely ill, we

travel to the hospital in Kindia, but even

there resources are limited; the doctor

tries his best but sometimes themedicines dont work. And even if they

do work, we cant stay in Kindia for long,

we have to return to the village, and

when we come back the children often

fall ill again.

25 year-old mother of two young children,

Bamaya village

worth noting that nearly all of our informants stated

that obtaining capital in order to increase input intensity

is a greater constraint to agricultural productivity in

this area than the availability of land, which suggests

agricultural livelihoods are indeed a viable means to

poverty reduction in this area (although, as discussed

in the final section, more intangible constraints to

pursuing farm-based development may exist).

As figure 9 opposite shows, for poor families nearly

70% of earned income in rural areas is derived fromcrop sales, again illustrating the potentially severe

impact crop failure can have on food security in this

area. Households supplement this income by selling

firewood, charcoal, and livestock products when

possible, as well as seeking out daily labor

opportunities. Figure 10 illustrates that much of the

harvest is sold in order to purchase a more diverse

range of foods from the market. In fact, more food

obtained from the market than from the crop harvest

itself. Wild foods are a surprisingly important source

of food as well; patches of managed forest dot the

countryside around Kindia, and provide a variety of

foods, medicines, and building materials.

The health situation in the villages is even more

distressing than in the city. The mothers of young

children with whom we spoke told us of the ubiquity

of diarrheal diseases, malaria, and respiratory

infections, particularly in the rainy season (see box).

Health facilities are difficult to access, with the

nearest hospital in the urban center of Kindia, a

half-days journey for many villages. The lack of healthsystem presence is reflected in mothers lack of

knowledge about optimal breastfeeding and hygiene

practices, which contributes to the higher rate of child

morbidity in the countryside, and likely has

longer-term effects on child growth.

The overall message of the preceding section is that

livelihoods in urban and rural Guinea are fraught with

a range of vulnerabilities. We now are able to theorize

why strong rural-urban linkages are failing to mitigate

food insecurity to a greater extent: because livelihoods

are weak, strong linkages in Guinea have the effect

of redistributing poverty across the urban-rural divide

and across the seasons. For example, the significant

cash flow from urban migrants in Conakry to their rural

relatives is not drawn from savings or surplus income.

Rather, sending cash even while lessening the hunger

of rural families reduces the ability of the urban

migrant to invest in building capital stocks to an extent

that would prevent an escape from their own food

insecurity and poverty. Importantly, this pattern ofreduced investment applies also to the migrants

human capital: that is, their health and knowledge,

which could be improved by seeking medical care and

educational services. Similarly, rural families may send

their food surpluses to urban relatives following the

harvest, but this comes at the cost of reducing their

own marketable surplus, and thus their ability to

consume and invest in, among other forms of capital,

their agricultural system and the human capital of

their families.


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My sons left for the city, eachdreaming that they would quickly finda trade as a mechanic, as a driver,

maybe construction. But they couldnt

find anythingnow some of them want to

return, but they dont have the means to

do so. They have debts in the city and

have to keep trying there.Mother of migrants, village of Sguya

The overall point is that, among the households in

Guinea we studied, livelihoods are too fragile to allow

strong rural-urban linkages to create a safety net

robust enough to adequately protect food security.

Instead, rural-urban linkages are better described as

an intra-family attempt to attain a more equitable

distribution of poverty, and to prevent either the urban

or rural sides of the household from enduring truly

catastrophic levels of hunger and undernutrition.

This latter point is important: links remain criticallyimportant for both urban and rural households.

Redistributing income, food, and assets in crisis periods

can mean the difference between a merely bad year

and the kind of livelihood- and health-destroying asset

erosion whose consequences will be felt for years to

come. Among the group of urban migrants with strong

rural links interviewed in this research, around 10-15%

of total food consumed during the year came from

their rural relatives. A similar percentage of total cash

obtained by rural households was received from their

urban family members. These links are thus a more

important source of cash and food than assistance

from the public sector or non-governmental

organizations.

IMPLICATIONS FOR IMPROVINGFOOD SECURITY IN GUINEAWhat are the implications of these conclusions for

development organizations and policymakers fighting

hunger and undernutrition in Guinea?

First, it is critical to understand that there is a

multiplicity of motives driving rural to urban migration.

Economic hardship is of course a powerful driving

force, but there are other important, less easily

quantified factors underlying the decision to move to

the city. Many of the young people we interviewed in

the villages dream of leaving the manual labor of the

farm. They are captivated by the idea of the city as

a glamorous, exciting place filled with opportunity.

Nearly every young man who talked to us thought they

would find work as a driver or a mechanic immediately

upon arriving in Conakry; the reality, as the testimony

in the box shows, is quite different. Many parents,

meanwhile, send their teenage children to study in

the city, but lacking a steady source of income, many

are forced to drop out.

As straightforward as these varied motivations are,

many development organizations design their

strategies under the assumption that successful rural

economic development which in practice usually

means interventions to increase agriculturalproductivity can stem the tide of migration. A more

effective approach may be to accept the reality that

migration is an inexorable trend, driven as much by

dreams as by poverty, and instead provide services for

migrants and their families to ease the difficult

transition.

Migrants arrive in the city filled with unrealistic

strategies for finding employment and without

contingency plans. They are able to stay with relatives

and friends for a short time, but these connections

cannot support them indefinitely. Eventually, their

lack of a strong social network makes weathering the

transition into city life difficult. The result can be slow

descent into food insecurity. NGOs could productively

assist migrants by offering services to help integrate

and protect, interventions such as:

Job search and city economy mapping resources


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Life in the village was filled withpoverty, yes, but not absolute misery.I left also because I was pulled by the

city, I was curious about what I could

achieve here, what a better life might

look like. We Guineans, we feed

ourselves on hope (Les Guineeans

se nourrit de lespoir).Focus group discussion participant,

Behanzin neighborhood, Conakry

to help the migrant understand what employment

opportunities are available in various sectors of the

urban economy, and which livelihoods are likely to

be fragile and which more robust in times of shock;

Employment training that provides new migrants,

who often arrive with little vocational knowledge,

with skills that allow them to be competitive

applicants in growing sectors of the urban economy;

Cash transfers, perhaps conditional on school

attendance, to prevent student migrants from

dropping out of school.These types of interventions would not only help to

prevent food insecurity and undernutrition among one

of the most vulnerable population groups in Conakry,

but, by strengthening urban livelihoods, provide the

future means for migrants to assist their rural relatives

without damaging their own ability to accumulate

capital stocks.

Even if development professionals are ideologically

opposed to rural-urban migration as many

government officials and NGO workers we talked to

in Guinea are, due to a fear of rural decline and urban

overpopulation there are still strategies available

to ease the difficulties potential migrants face. For

example, this research found that one-time severe

shocks, in particular the death of a male breadwinner,

are a major cause of migration. Lacking options,

widows take the great risk of moving with their

children to the city, hoping to find some form of work.

Thus NGOs seeking to address the needs of exactly

those who would otherwise become the migrants atgreatest risk of food insecurity and undernutrition in

the city could pre-emptively target households headed

by young females in food-insecure villages for safety

net interventions.

Another major implication of this research is that

seasonality strongly affects rural-urban linkages, and

development organizations can leverage this fact to

more effectively address food insecurity and

undernutrition. For example, urban migrants send cash

to rural relatives as cash becomes available. However,

the time of greatest need for farm households is clear:

from the mid-to-late rainy season, when food stocks

are running low, illnesses are rampant, and few sources

of income exist. One idea to better utilize migrant

resources, for example, would be to set up a

remittance savings account into which migrants

could deposit money at any point in the year. This

account could be left to gather interest until a

pre-chosen time in the hunger season, when it would

be sent to rural relatives. Such a strategy would both

ease pressure on migrants to find adequate amounts

of cash at a specific time of year, and add value (in

the form of interest) to a scarce resource.

The problem for rural households wishing to support

urban migrants is exactly the opposite as that noted

in the previous paragraph: the main aid resource, foodin kind, is available at a single point in time (after

harvest), but the need extends throughout the year.

In addition, the post-harvest season is when food prices

are in fact lowest for urban residents as well, so the

resource is being provided at the time when its value

is most diminished. There are several ways that NGOs

could amplify the worth of the resource. One would

be to construct storage facilities so that the harvest

could be sold later in the season when prices are

higher. Another is to facilitate the creation of a

community food bank to which families could sell


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at a price level between that prevailing at harvest

time and that at hunger season time; the cash value

of the food sold could then be transferred by the NGO

to urban migrant relatives, thus saving also on

transport costs. Setting the price level as noted above

would not only increase the cash value of the food

sold for the individual household, but also make a

cheaper-than-market source of food available for the

community during the hunger season, provided the

selling price is similar to the purchase price (if the

NGO is willing to subsidize storage costs). Yet anotheridea is to create a voucher system between urban and

rural traders whereby city residents could obtain food

throughout the year at a given urban outlet up to the

value sold by farm families to a partner rural outlet;

this latter option would save both transport and

storage costs for the household. Other projects like

facilitating the set-up of a secure and efficient cash

and food transfer system between food-insecure

villages and migrant city neighborhoods would be even

simpler and more straightforward to implement.

Overall, this research affirms the importance of

analyzing urban and rural economies as a unified

whole. Policymakers and development organizations

can usefully leverage existing rural-urban linkages to

fight hunger and undernutrition in Guinea, but must

keep the prevailing constraints in mind. Most

importantly, strong linkages without strong underlying

livelihood systems will only result in a more equal

distribution of poverty which is perhaps more

desirable than a catastrophic poverty on one side orthe other, but certainly less than what could

potentially be achieved by leveraging linkages through

carefully planned interventions. Along with

constraints, however, come opportunities. By

understanding the motivations behind migration, as

well as the importance of seasonality in shaping the

relationship between urban migrants and their rural

relatives, development professionals can design

interventions like those suggested in the preceding

paragraphs to bolster the efforts of family members

to support each other.

Finally, we note that rural-urban linkages are an

attempt by households to create their own safety net.

By helping to improve this safety net, NGOs and other

concerned groups affirm their commitment to a truly

participatory development, a process in which the

shape of policies and programs is determined not by

ideas from above, but by the poor themselves.

By Bapu Vaitla

RURAL-URBAN LINKAGES - Guinea

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