Leadership in food security: African traditional and humanitarian organisations’ leadership perspectives in food aid delivery. A case of Matabeleland in Zimbabwe

Abstract

Relief food aid delivery has failed in Africa to create beneficiary resilience in recurring drought and famine disasters. The deliveries of food aid to starving recipients delay or the food quantities delivered never match the amount and type of food needed. The traditional leadership participation is lacking at designing, planning and very limited at the implementation of the emergency response. Humanitarian relief aid leadership focuses on
fulfilling the donor mandates and the rights of beneficiaries to adequate food. It is oblivious to the needs of the food recipients due to the leadership’s ignorance of beneficiaries’ traditional and indigenous coping methods against famine disasters. African traditional leadership has, however, had household and community coping mechanisms against drought and famine disasters, but the leadership is ignorant about the operations of contemporary humanitarian relief food aid leadership. This research assesses traditional and relief aid NGOs leadership mechanisms that can increase food aid beneficiaries’ resilience against progressive drought and
famine disasters. The study was qualitative and semi-structured interviews were used to collect data that was analysed using MAXQDA (2018) that generated leadership thematic classifications in response to drought and famine disasters. The traditional and relief aid nongovernmental organisations’ leadership mechanisms contrasts in the study of food security resulted in three main leadership outcomes, namely Knowledge, creativity and adaptation for traditional leadership and limited outcomes and focus for the non-governmental organisations’ leadership. The research also highlights that the basis of the success of the traditional leadership model in ensuring food security is the relationship with and dependence on the natural environment produce.