The Cash and Food for Livelihoods Pilot (CFLP) project was a cash and food-forassets
scheme implemented in southern Malawi over the eight months from
October 2008 to May 2009, benefiting 11,100 households. CFLP was designed to
prevent acute hunger and invest in disaster prevention and preparedness
measures by providing cash, food and mixed cash/food transfers in exchange for
participation in the construction of community assets, in line with food-for-assets
(FFA) activities under a regular protracted relief and recovery operation (PRRO).2
By randomly selecting target beneficiaries for the different transfer types,
the project aimed to identify how cash can help WFP and similar agencies
achieve their food security goals. Although previous studies of cash transfers in
Malawi have demonstrated that cash can be an effective tool for both generating
investments in human capital (Miller, 2009) and responding to humanitarian
needs (Devereux et al., 2007), few have used a randomized method to compare
the use of cash with that of food. By taking this unique approach to cash in
humanitarian contexts, the CFLP project attempted to produce learning and best
practices for guiding appropriate integration of cash into the WFP response
toolkit.