There are a number of emergency, nutrition and poverty-oriented programs which could
 be regarded as safety net programs under the more general use of the term. Two of these have
 had national level coverage in the recent past. The first is the emergency food assistance and
 drought relief programmes coordinated by WFP in response to the five national orlocal drnnuht.
 since 1987. All drought affected regions in the country have been covered according to need.
 WFP has also implemented a vulnerable group feeding program since 1972. This is being phased\
 out, and by its close in 1998 will have delivered 120,000 tons of food, valued at $36.672 million
 to 1.219 million beneficiaries at a total cost of $62.157 million. This program is being phased
S v-out beca-use evaluation has shown that over twenty years of suplementary feeding has had no
 /discernable impact on levels of malnutrition in Malawi Currently it is reaching 150,000
 S( beneficiaries, using Nutrition Rehabilitation Units, Community-Based Supplementary Feeding and
 St.Mother and Child Health Centres. Neither of these programs have major long-term
 aevelopmenta impact. -. .'7

 Sitl0' There are a number of small scale developmental programs, run by NGOs, donors or
 /' government, many concentrating on a combination of training and credit. The largest of these is
 the Mudzi Financial Services Project, part of the Malawi Rural Finance Corpnratin which is --
 based on the model of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh. At present this project is lending\
 MK7.3million, to 600 centres of 20-25 women each. in five ADs. Borrowers undergo extensive
 training to develop business plans, mainly for off-farm income generating activities. It is targeted
 primarily at women with less than one hectare of land, and most of the businesses funded are in
 ( petty trading, restaurants or food processing. This project is currently being expanded to national 1J .
 S,-'coverage, andhas pledge line of millionn in total for credit, net of administrative costs. GTZ ic"
 runs a smaller credit scheme, the Promotion of Micro-Enterprises for Rural Women, again
Acl kytargeted at women. NGOs such as VEZA also run targeted resource transfer schemes which
 i Q, A encourage off-farm activities. .;i jwL

 3 At present there is no nationwide state safety net, though there are a number of programs
 which target poor rural households. To understand how poor households cope under economic
 and food stress, one has to examine social safety nets i.e. the structures and institutions which
 exist in civil society which households can call upon in extremity. These are often complex
 systems of obligations which the better-off, or those with traditional positions of authority, carry
 towards the poor. In Malawi the major social safety net is hasd nn thp SyVtem nf onnyu or
 casual rural labour. For most poor rural households, when their grain stocks run out. they will
 sell any non-grain crops to buy maize or cassava. and if they have no crops to sell, then family
 members will go looking for ganyu. Ganyu is, in general, not very remunerative, because the
 supply of rural labour is far greater than the demand. It is reported that estates will sometimes
 employ more people than they need, to give employment opportunities to the poorest (SCF, 1996).
 Without this income source, many rural families would be even more food insecure than they are
 at present. Ganyu gives very poor returns to labour, particularly if the time spent looking for
 ganyu is included. For those households which are labour scarce, as is the case with many female-
 headed households, ganyu can lock the family into a vicious circle where labour time is spent on
 ganyu rather than on the farm, but it does allow them to survive. In time, the processes of