Social protection in sub-Saharan Africa Lessons and Challenges

Armando Barrientos, David Hulme, and Miguel Nino-Zarazua

Brooks World Poverty InstituteThe University of Manchester

www.bwpi.manchester.ac.uk www.chronicpoverty.org

• Global rise of social protection programmes in developing countries (Mexico’s Oportunidades, Brazil’s Bolsa Familia, India’s Employment Guarantee Scheme, China’s Minimum Living Subsidy Scheme and many more, South Africa’s grants)

• What is Social Protection?– “public actions taken in response to levels of vulnerability, risks, and

deprivation, which are deemed socially unacceptable within a given polity and society” (Conway, de Haan and Norton 2000).

• Social Insurance, labour market regulation, social assistance– Social assistance includes tax-financed, government provided, instruments

focused on poverty

The global rise of social protection

Social assistance and poverty analysis

• Informed by new perspectives on poverty: – depth and severity of poverty, not just headcount – poverty is multidimensional, – duration is extremely important (poverty traps)

• Household agency and productive capacity• Reducing poverty in the future by reducing vulnerability

(…to poverty)• Transfers must be regular and reliable, and over an

appropriate period of time, to enable investment

In Sub-Saharan Africa?

• Social pensions in Southern cone (South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland)

• ‘Older’ schemes Zambia’s PWAS, Mozambique FSB; and pilot transfer programmes (Zambia, Tanzania, Malawi, Nigeria, Ghana…), Ethiopia’s PSNP

• West and Central Africa – UNICEF Report

• Second-generation PRSs. National Social Protection Strategies in Ghana, Mozambique, Rwanda and Uganda -Livingstone Process – African Union, ministerial level

• Shift in aid modalities: from emergency aid to predictable budget support

Main Lessons I

• Importance of knowledge base– Poverty and vulnerability profiles are essential

• Political and public support for social protection is key to its sustainability– Weak ‘demand’ for social protection– Political systems fail to aggregate preferences– ‘Poverty reduction is a problem for donors’

• Delivery Ministries are weak and have limited policy formulation and delivery capacity

baseline all children Orphans all children in poverty Elderly Elderly in

povertyChildren in

bottom decile

Poverty gap 8.7 8 8 7.5 8.2 7.5 6.4

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Uganda. Estimated impact on the poverty gap of allocating 1% of GDP in different ways. (Simulations assume that perfect targeting is costless, and that beneficiary households share

transfers equally among household members)

Main Lessons II

• Diversity in design of current programmes– Programme design involves adaptation

• Scale and scope are most important• ‘social protection is not enough’, we also

need growth and public services• tackle both ‘current’ and ‘future’ poverty

Village committee in Kalomo District in Zambia responsible for the

implementation of the Social Transfer Pilot Programme

Armando Barrientos/2005

Key Challenges

• Learning from past efforts

• Finance:– Resources required are less than 1% GDP– Domestic financing in the medium run– ‘Socialisation’ of costs of poverty versus ‘resource mobilisation’

• Capacity building

• Coordination and integration of social assistance with social policy and labour market policy

• Institution building not emergency safety nets

• Reaching all those in poverty