social protection mechanisms in southern africa · pdf filesocial protection mechanisms in...

Social protection mechanisms in southern Africa

Stephen Devereux

June 2006

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Acknowledgements With thanks to Katherine Vincent for excellent research assistance, to Frank Ellis and Philip White for insightful comments, and to the authors of the country ‘Knowledge Review and Gap Analysis’ papers for detailed information on national social protection programmes.

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Contents Acknowledgements........................................................................................................ i

Contents..................................................................................................................... ii

Abbreviations ............................................................................................................. iv

Executive Summary..................................................................................................... vi

1 Introduction and concepts........................................................................................1

1.1 Defining social protection .................................................................................1

1.2 Safety nets or social protection?........................................................................2

1.3 Vulnerability analysis.......................................................................................3

2 Country overviews ..................................................................................................4

2.1 Government Strategies, Policies, Plans and Programmes.......................................4

2.2 Donors, international NGOs and local civil society ................................................5

2.2.1 Lesotho ......................................................................................................5

2.2.2 Malawi .......................................................................................................7

2.2.3 Mozambique ............................................................................................. 10

2.2.4 Swaziland................................................................................................. 12

2.2.5 Zambia .................................................................................................... 13

2.2.6 Zimbabwe ................................................................................................ 14

3 Conclusions and Implications for RHVP .................................................................... 18

3.1 Gaps in social protection ................................................................................ 18

3.2 Programming challenges ................................................................................ 19

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3.3 RHVP learning opportunities ........................................................................... 20

Bibliography .............................................................................................................. 23

Annex. Summary of Selected Country Programmes........................................................ 28

Lesotho.................................................................................................................. 28

Malawi ................................................................................................................... 30

Mozambique ........................................................................................................... 36

Swaziland............................................................................................................... 42

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Abbreviations AIDS Acquired Immuno-deficiency Syndrome

ART Anti-Retroviral Treatment

ARV Anti-Retrovirals

CRS Catholic Relief Services

DFID Department for International Development

DSW Department of Social Welfare

ESPP Enhanced Social Protection Programme

EU European Union

FACT Food and cash transfer project

FAO Food and Agricultural Organisation

GAPVU Office for Assistance to Vulnerable Populations

GTZ German Technical Co-operation

HIV Human Imuno-deficiency Virus

IMF International Monetary Fund

INAS National Institute for Social Action

NCP Neighbourhood Care Points

NGO Non-Governmental Organisation

NSNP National Safety Net Programme

ODI Overseas Development Institute

OVC Orphans and Vulnerable Children

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PAAP Poverty Alleviation Action Programme

PWAS Public Welfare Assistance Scheme

RHVP Regional Hunger and Vulnerability Programme

TB Tuberculosis

UNICEF United Nations Children’s Fund

USAID United States Agency for International Development

VAC Vulnerability Assessment Committee

WFP World Food Programme

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Executive Summary This study reviews existing knowledge on social protection experiences and lessons in southern Africa, concentrating on policies and instruments currently implemented in the six RHVP focus countries: Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Social protection includes but is not limited to safety nets, and describes all initiatives that provide income (cash) and/or consumption (food) transfers to the poor, protect the vulnerable against livelihood risks, and enhance the social status and rights of socially excluded and marginalised people. In practice social protection remains focused on the first and second of these objectives, covering similar ground to narrowly defined safety nets.

Social protection is a relatively new concept in southern Africa, and welfarist safety net programmes and interventions to save lives following livelihood shocks dominate policy responses to risk and vulnerability. The ideal of social protection as guaranteed, predictable transfers to all chronically vulnerable groups remains a distant ambition, although there are significant movements in this direction in several southern African countries.

Apart from formal social security arrangements for workers, three categories of safety nets for the rural poor are found in all six RHVP countries. These are: social assistance to people who are unable to work, emergency relief to people affected by livelihood shocks, and food security support to subsistence-oriented farmers. Since the 2001/02 food crisis considerable effort has gone into improving vulnerability analysis, installing more effective safety nets against humanitarian disasters, and systematising social protection against chronic vulnerability.

A number of policies and strategies that address social protection are common to almost every country in the region. These include poverty reduction strategies, national development plans and food security policies. A characteristic feature of these strategies and policies is problems with implementation or delivery.

Donors play a dominant role in financing social protection programmes in southern Africa, and international NGOs play a significant role in delivering these programmes, and in implementing their own projects. Most African governments do implement some social welfare measures, though these are limited and under funded. Local civil society also plays a role, often more prominently in the area of advocacy and rights than in service delivery or resource transfers.

Lesotho has no social protection strategy. Instead a number of policies and programmes address specific dimensions of vulnerability and provide support to particular vulnerable groups. The country remains chronically food aid dependent.

Social protection policy in Malawi has been characterised by diversity and lack of continuity. A wider range of interventions has been tried in Malawi than in any other country in southern

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Africa, but these remain projects rather than being institutionalised and are often abandoned after a few years.

Mozambique has a wide range of projects and programmes providing social protection to different groups of vulnerable citizens, but these measures do not add up to a comprehensive social protection strategy.

Swaziland has a number of policies and strategies that incorporate social protection elements, though none of them explicitly aims to co-ordinate these interventions under a single conceptual or policy framework.

Zambia is currently formulating a National Social Protection Strategy – the first in the southern Africa region. This should have the effect of bringing together a wide range of small scale initiatives, many of which are designed, funded and implemented by international donors and local NGOs, to address specific social assistance needs of sections of the Zambian population.

Zimbabwe has an extensive range of formal social protection measures, many of which were in place before the recent macro-economic and political crises, others being introduced in response to recent sharp rises in vulnerability.

Despite these interventions many sources of vulnerability and many categories of vulnerable people are inadequately covered by existing social protection arrangements. Among these gaps, two intervention areas are especially important in terms of their impacts and the numbers of people affected. On the supply side, food production needs to be promoted at household and national levels, partly by facilitating access to agricultural inputs. On the demand side, market dependent food consumers need to be protected against excessive food price fluctuations, especially during the annual hungry season or pre-harvest months.

Challenges include shifting from emergency response mode to predictable risk management; scaling up, institutionalisation and co-ordination of existing programmes and projects; recognising that ‘affordability’ and ‘sustainability’ are political as much as fiscal; and addressing market failures as a solution beyond social transfers.

Learning opportunities include the need to assess alternative approaches to enhancing access to agricultural inputs; considering innovative approaches to food price stabilisation; consolidating and drawing the lessons from recent regional experiences with unconditional cash transfers; drawing lessons from both failures in the region (for example, price subsidies and price controls) and international successes (including labour market interventions in India, conditional cash transfers in Latin America and asset transfers in Bangladesh).

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1 Introduction and concepts The objective of this desk study is to undertake a review of existing knowledge on social protection experiences and lessons in southern Africa, with a particular focus on policies and instruments currently implemented in the six RHVP focus countries: Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

1.1 Defining social protection

‘Safety nets’ are a familiar concept in southern Africa, describing interventions that protect lives and ensure a minimum subsistence in times of crisis. Typically, social safety nets are food based and short term in nature. ‘Social protection’ includes safety nets but is broader in scope and more diverse in practice. One definition of social protection (Devereux and Sabates-Wheeler 2004) suggests that it describes all initiatives that:

provide income (cash) and/or consumption (food) transfers to the poor,

protect the vulnerable against livelihood risks, and

enhance the social status and rights of socially excluded and marginalised people.

In practice social protection remains focused on the first and second of these objectives, covering similar ground to narrowly defined safety nets. In fact social protection interventions can be classified into four distinct categories according to their objectives:

Protective: the most basic ‘safety net’ measures; the objective is to save lives and offer relief from deprivation. Protective interventions include emergency relief, supplementary feeding, HIV/AIDS support, disability allowance, and unconditional cash transfers.

Preventive: these interventions aim to avert deprivation. Preventive interventions include crop and weather insurance, pensions, health insurance, unemployment benefits, savings clubs and burial societies.

Promotive: these interventions aim to enhance incomes and capabilities but are delivered through social protection mechanisms. Promotive social protection interventions include agricultural input distribution or input subsidies, school feeding schemes that encourage attendance, public works schemes that create community assets, and ‘conditional cash transfers’ that require beneficiaries to send their children to schools and clinics.


Transformative: these interventions aim to address issues of social equity and exclusion, and to reduce vulnerability by transforming the socio-legal context within which livelihoods are constructed. Transformative interventions include labour market regulation and workers’ rights, anti-discrimination campaigns, or promoting awareness of citizens’ rights.

1.2 Safety nets or social protection?

Social protection is a relatively new concept in southern Africa, where many policy makers still prefer the term ‘safety net’, and most countries have Safety Net Programmes or Food Security Strategies, rather than Social Protection Strategies. Welfarist safety net programmes and interventions to save lives following drought and other livelihood shocks dominate policy responses to risk and vulnerability, but these interventions are neither predictable nor comprehensive. The ideal of social protection as guaranteed, predictable transfers to all chronically vulnerable groups remains a distant ambition, although there are significant movements in this direction in several southern African countries.

Before the food crisis of 2001/02, social protection in southern Africa was more advanced than elsewhere in Africa, but coverage was patchy both within and across countries. In a few countries, social welfare was institutionalised and well administered, following the European social security model, but eligibility was restricted to specific groups – civil servants, private sector employees, and special interest groups such as war veterans. Throughout the region, urban residents and formal sector employees were better covered than rural residents. For instance, except in Botswana, Namibia and South Africa, old age pensions do not extend to informal sector workers and rural farmers, who comprise the overwhelming majority of the region’s population. Despite being highly vulnerable, these individuals and households were – and still are – excluded from most forms of social welfare, partly because of the belief that rural communities enjoy better access to various forms of informal social assistance (eg reciprocity, rotating savings and credit groups, and burial societies) than do urban households. A more practical concern is the cost of delivering regular transfers of cash or food to large proportions of the population, which is often considered prohibitively unaffordable. Apart from formal social security arrangements for public sector and private sector workers, three categories of safety nets for the rural poor are found in all six RHVP countries:

Social assistance to people who are unable to work (long term protection against poverty and hunger): eg monthly cash grants to people with disabilities, orphans, the chronically ill, older people without family support, and other standard ‘vulnerable groups‘,

Emergency relief to people affected by livelihood shocks, especially erratic weather (short term protection against destitution and starvation): mainly food aid, either delivered free or as food-for-work, also post-disaster rehabilitation measures,


Food security support to subsistence-oriented farmers (promotion of food production and sustainable access to food): including input subsidies, inputs-for-work and ‘Starter Packs’.

1.3 Vulnerability analysis

The 2001/02 food crisis changed the way governments and donors perceive and respond to livelihood vulnerability in southern Africa. Erratic rainfall triggered a more severe crisis than a comparable drought in the early 1990s, and exposed deep structural vulnerabilities in local economies and rural livelihoods. In the intervening ten years, several sources of vulnerability had intensified, while many new vulnerability factors had emerged – HIV/AIDS, governance failures and flawed economic reforms. Since the 2001/02 crisis, considerable effort has gone into improving vulnerability analysis (eg regional and national Vulnerability Assessment Committees), installing more effective safety nets against humanitarian disasters (such as experiments with vouchers and cash transfers), and systematising social protection against chronic vulnerability (eg National Plans of Action for Orphans and Vulnerable Children).

Social protection is a response to particular understandings of vulnerability, which include:

Transitory vulnerability: related to livelihood shocks (eg harvest failures triggered by erratic rainfall) that affect economically active groups and for which the appropriate response is emergency relief (food aid, cash transfers or vouchers) and rehabilitation measures (eg fertiliser, seeds and tools). These are conventional social safety nets.

Chronic vulnerability: related to demographic characteristics or life-cycle events (old age, orphanhood, widowhood) for which the appropriate response is social assistance (predictable transfers of cash and other resources). This is analogous to social welfare.

Structural vulnerability: related to market failures, structural unemployment, political marginalisation, social exclusion, etc – requiring ‘developmental safety nets’.

It must be emphasised that these vulnerabilities are interconnected. Those who suffer most from transitory vulnerability (ie livelihood shocks) are already chronically vulnerable (eg female-headed households) and/or structurally vulnerable (eg minority ethnic groups).


2 Country overviews This section reviews policies and programmes currently in place in the six RHVP countries: Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Some common patterns can be identified when comparing experiences across the six countries.

2.1 Government strategies, policies, plans and programmes

A number of policies and strategies that address social protection, directly or indirectly, are common to almost every country in the region. These include:

Poverty Reduction Strategy,

National Development Plan,

Food Security Policy,

National Safety Net Strategy/Programme,

Disaster Management Policy,

HIV/AIDS Strategy,

Social welfare policies for specific sources of vulnerability or vulnerable groups: Disability, Old Age, Orphans and other Vulnerable Children,

Relevant sectoral policies: Agriculture, Education, Health, Nutrition, etc.

One reason for the presence of these policies and strategies in almost all countries could be that they are often donor driven – designed with technical assistance provided or paid for by international donor partners, financed or co-financed by donors, implemented either in partnership with government ministries or by international NGOs working in each country. Another common characteristic is problems with implementation or delivery. Poor country governments typically lack the technical, fiscal, management and logistical capacity to manage complex programmes effectively, hence the need for external support. Capacity constraints can be particularly binding for social assistance programmes that imply regular transfers of resources to large numbers of poor people, who often live in physically isolated areas outside the formal economy and far from government services, banks or post offices.


2.2 Donors, international NGOs and local civil society

As noted, donors play a dominant role in financing social protection programmes in southern Africa, and international NGOs play a significant role in delivering these programmes, and in implementing their own projects many of which are welfarist in nature. These externally-driven interventions can be seen as complementing formal government responses – filling the gaps that Ministries of Social Welfare at present do not reach. Many international NGOs pursue explicitly charitable objectives, such as ‘feeding the hungry’ or ‘helping the aged’ or ‘saving the children’, so they have a bias towards welfarist goals (though they also support livelihood promotion and sustainable development). Much of the funding that NGOs draw on comes from charitable contributions, but a large proportion also comes from bilateral and multilateral donors, who trust the competence and capacity of NGOs to deliver their preferred programmes.

Another motivation is differences in priorities between external actors (donors, international NGOs) and domestic actors (governments). African governments are often not convinced of the need for social protection, arguing that welfare transfers create dependency, undermine traditional informal support mechanisms, and divert scarce public resources that could be better invested in productive sectors like agriculture or industry. Nonetheless most African countries do implement some social welfare measures, even if limited and under funded. Given this scepticism, donors advocating expanded social protection in Africa tend to see NGOs with a welfarist mandate as their natural allies in delivering these programmes.

A final set of actors is local civil society, whose role is often more prominent in the area of advocacy and rights than in service delivery or resource transfers. Initiatives in South Africa such as the Treatment Action Campaign and the campaign for a Basic Income Grant (BIG) for all citizens exemplify this role. There are signs that rights-oriented civil society actors or networks in other countries in southern Africa are ready and willing to take on this activist role around campaigning for basic social protection as a right of citizenship.

2.2.1 Lesotho

Lesotho has no social protection strategy. Instead a number of policies and programmes address specific dimensions of vulnerability and provide support to particular vulnerable groups. Three platforms that contribute to social protection are the Food Security Policy, social welfare programmes, and disaster management interventions.

In 2005 the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security adopted a Food Security Policy which includes many social protection principles and interventions such as public transfers and social safety nets, promotion of food production, mainstreaming HIV/AIDS, managing food aid and food stocks, and employment promotion. During the emergency of 2002 the Ministry introduced agricultural input subsidies as a rehabilitation programme, but these have since been discontinued. Interestingly the Food Security Policy of 2005 (Government of Lesotho


2005) divides the population into four categories, each with different needs for social protection or livelihood support:

“a) the extremely poor, who will need safety nets and social protection measures;

b) the chronically vulnerable, who will need transfers on a temporary basis

c) those who are vulnerable to transitory food insecurity, who will need immediate food or cash based relief measures;

d) those not usually vulnerable to food insecurity, who will need support to enable them to become more productive and competitive”.

The Department of Social Welfare (DSW) provides social assistance to targeted vulnerable groups. The DSW’s Public Assistance Programme provides predictable cash transfers to vulnerable groups such as older people, war veterans, orphans, people with disabilities, and the chronically ill. A non-contributory social pension was introduced in 2004, which delivers monthly cash grants to 60,000 citizens over 70 years old (see Box 1). Under the National Policy on Inclusion of People with Disabilities, a monthly disability allowance is paid. Many programmes address vulnerability related to HIV and AIDS, including provision of anti-retroviral treatment (ART) in public health facilities since 2004, and a National Policy on Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) which has been described as innovative in social protection terms.

A unique source of vulnerability in Lesotho relates to changing patterns of labour migration and declining remittances from Basotho working in South Africa, which has undermined the coping

Box 1. Social pensions in Lesotho

When the Government of Lesotho introduced its non-contributory old age pension in September 2004 it became the fourth country in southern Africa to do so – after South Africa, Namibia and Botswana – but by far the poorest of the four. Positive features of Lesotho’s pension include: it was designed, implemented and financed entirely by the Government of Lesotho (against IMF advice, which declared it to be unaffordable); it responds to deepening vulnerability among older people who are assuming increasing responsibility for child care in a context of high HIV prevalence; and it is universal for all citizens over 70 years old, rather than means tested – a right of citizenship. Social pensioners are entitled to M150 (£13) per month. Because of gendered differentials in life expectancy, the programme targets more women (60%) than men (40%). The high age criterion (70 years) cuts programme costs – important given Lesotho’s low GDP – but the pension still amounts to 3% of gross national income. The main challenges now are to extend coverage by lowering the age threshold to 65 or 60 years, and to cover other gaps in social welfare provision for younger age groups and for different sources of vulnerability.


capacity of families and communities. The government’s decision to introduce an old age pension in 2004 was partly a response to the declining support to older people that this has caused, and partly recognition of the increasingly important role of older people in Lesotho as primary carers for orphans and other vulnerable children.

Lesotho is chronically food aid dependent, with regular food transfers to school children (daily meals have been provided to all children attending school for over 20 years), pregnant and lactating mothers, the terminally ill (monthly rations to people in home-based care), and the chronically and transitorily food insecure. The Food Aid Policy of 2000 supports the use of food aid not only for disaster mitigation and response (eg ‘Targeted Vulnerable Group Feeding’), but also to stimulate development initiatives. Rehabilitation measures involving food aid include food-for-work and food-for-assets. However concerns are growing about the negative effects of food aid on trade and farmers, in response to which the Lesotho Fund for Community Development implements cash-for-work projects rather than food-for-work.

A recent study by the Disaster Management Unit in Lesotho identified serious errors of inclusion and exclusion in the targeting methodology used for emergency food aid and food-for-work programmes; when communities were asked to identify needy beneficiaries they typically inflated and biased the list of names. Concerns over accurate identification and targeting of individuals and households eligible for social assistance and other support are also common in other RHVP countries, especially where eligibility is determined by food insecurity or poverty status rather than by easily identifiable characteristics such as age, disability, widowhood or orphanhood.

2.2.2 Malawi

Social protection policy in Malawi has been characterised by diversity and lack of continuity. A wider range of interventions has been tried in Malawi than in any other country in southern Africa, but these remain projects rather than being institutionalised; they are usually abandoned after a few years (eg starter packs); and sometimes re-introduced years later (eg fertiliser subsidies). The National Safety Nets Programme (NSNP), implemented in 2000 under Malawi’s Poverty Reduction Strategy, aimed to provide assets to the economically active who face livelihood constraints due to poverty or market failure, and to provide food or cash transfers to the economically inactive, people who face livelihood shocks, and marginalised groups. The NSNP has achieved only limited success, due to a lack of financial as well as management capacity and a tendency to experiment with a range of ad hoc, small scale and short term interventions rather than a coherent, co-ordinated and sustained set of nationally owned social protection measures. These interventions can be categorised either as productivity enhancing safety nets (free inputs distribution, fertiliser subsidies, public works), or as direct welfare transfers (food or cash transfers to poor and vulnerable people).

Productivity enhancing safety nets in Malawi include free input distribution (ie starter packs), fertiliser subsidies, and public works programmes, mostly funded by DFID, the EU, USAID and the World Bank. The case for starter packs and fertiliser subsidies is that supporting food production in landlocked Malawi is more cost effective than subsidising food consumption through food aid. At its peak in 2000 universal starter packs contributed 16% to


the national maize harvest and kept maize prices affordable. The case against subsidised or free input distribution is that they distort markets, undermine trade, are fiscally unsustainable, and tend to leak to wealthier farmers, estates and neighbouring countries. Targeting such transfers is problematic and prone to politicisation. Nonetheless, until access to affordable inputs can be assured through the market, there may be no alternative to input subsidies or handouts.

Public works programmes avoid targeting problems by being self targeting (because of the work requirement and low payment offered), and in Malawi food-for-work, cash-for-work and inputs-for-work have all been trialled. However, the work requirement excludes all labour-constrained households, who may be among the most vulnerable, while the assets created under public works – usually community infrastructure such as feeder roads – are generally low quality and badly maintained, so do not generate lasting economic benefits (Devereux and Macauslan 2006).

Direct welfare transfers include emergency food aid, targeted nutrition programmes, school feeding schemes, and unconditional cash transfers to the poor and vulnerable. Evaluations found that emergency food aid distributed in Malawi during 2002 was weakly targeted on poor and drought-affected households, but well targeted by easily observable indicators of vulnerability – such as orphans and female-headed households (Sharma 2005). This is typical of general food distributions in other years – during the emergency response of 2005/06, for instance – and in other countries. Although indicators of chronic vulnerability are often seen as synonymous with acute vulnerability, these problems are quite distinct and affect different categories of household (ie farmers versus the labour constrained). The tendency to confuse chronic and transitory vulnerability affects social protection in many other countries as well as Malawi.

There is evidence from Malawi that targeted nutrition programmes, such as supplementary feeding schemes, are cost ineffective compared to other social protection interventions, and have achieved little in terms of addressing the underling causes of food insecurity. Nonetheless in 2003/04 the Ministry of Health delivered supplementary and therapeutic feeding to 38,000 malnourished children, orphan carers and pregnant/lactating mothers, with USAID food aid.

School feeding schemes are popular because of evidence from Malawi and elsewhere that they improve enrolment, attendance, and possibly performance – because better nourished learners perform better in exams – and that they reduce the withdrawal of children from school during hard times. School feeding is unpopular because it is seen as reinforcing food aid dependency and being stigmatising, while having little nutritional impact (because school meals simply substitute for meals at home). For this reason school feeding is now promoted more as an education intervention than as a nutrition intervention, but in Malawi and elsewhere the introduction of fee free primary education has achieved a much greater impact on enrolment than free school meals.

Malawi has limited experience with unconditional cash transfers. In 2001/02, the Dedza Safety Net Pilot Project transferred cash, vouchers (to buy goods at local stores), or a package of commodities (maize-flour, blankets, soap) to households in 54 villages. Cash and commodities


were evaluated more positively than vouchers, which were complex and costly to administer, and were abused by some retailers who raised their prices. The main problem with cash was that its value fell as food prices rose, so that cash transfers could purchase the least food during the hungry season, when staple food was most needed. During the 2005/06 emergency Oxfam implemented a cash transfer programme for 6,000 households in one district, while Concern Worldwide implemented a ‘food plus cash’ transfer programme for 5,000 households in three districts (see Box 2). Also in 2006 the Government of Malawi and UNICEF are introducing unconditional cash transfers in one district as a long term social protection measure for people affected by HIV and AIDS, with funding from the Global Fund, under the National Plan of Action for OVC. HIV is a major risk factor in Malawi (as in most countries of southern Africa), with over one million orphans and 30% female-headed households.

There are particular reasons why vulnerability in Malawi appears to be worse than in other RHVP countries. The disproportionate impact of the 2001/02 food crisis in Malawi, relative to neighbouring countries, is attributed to severe land pressure - especially in southern Malawi - which makes achieving self sufficiency impossible for most households even in good rainfall years, and to limited opportunities to earn off-farm income when harvests are insufficient. A related factor is the weakness of maize markets in a context of high market dependence for food. Price seasonality implies a doubling of food prices – or even quadrupling in bad years – between the harvest and the hungry season, and is an issue requiring urgent policy attention. Either markets must be strengthened so that inter-seasonal food price fluctuations are less extreme, or vulnerable households must be compensated for market failures (with food aid or cash transfers that are adjusted for rising food prices – as in Concern WorldWide’s FACT project, discussed below). These are among the reasons why social protection is a crucial policy issue in Malawi, arguably more urgent than in other countries in the region.


Box 2. Unconditional cash transfers in emergencies

Concern Worldwide implemented an innovative ‘food and cash transfers’ project (FACT) in three districts of Malawi during 2005/06, targeted at households identified by communities as affected by the food crisis. From January to April 2006, 5,050 beneficiaries received a monthly package of food (20kg maize, 4kg beans, 1 litre oil) and a variable amount of cash depending on household size. All beneficiaries also received more cash as the price of maize rose during the hungry season. The intention was to protect household entitlements to food by ensuring that the combination of food and cash was sufficient to meet subsistence needs, no matter whether the household was large or small and whether food prices were high or low. Food was provided to protect households against the possibility of market failure (maize was unavailable on many markets for some weeks), while the cash was intended to provide choice and the ability to meet non-food needs.

Regular monitoring and a final evaluation found that the FACT project achieved its objectives. Most of the food was consumed – there was some sharing among relatives – and most of the cash was used to buy staple food (maize or cassava when maize was unavailable). Some cash was spent on essentials – health care, maize milling, groceries (relish, salt, soap), and transport (to market or hospital). The predictability of transfers – guaranteed in advance for four months – enabled FACT beneficiaries to save some cash and invest in fertiliser, small stock (poultry, goats) or renting land.

The FACT project had little impact on food and commodity markets – either negative (the possibility that cash transfers would cause food price inflation) or positive (the possibility that cash transfers would attract traders and stimulate local markets). However, there was some impact on labour markets. FACT beneficiaries did not go for ganyu (casual labour), leaving more time for farming and caring for children and the ill – which also released more opportunities for people looking for work.

Source: Devereux, Mvula and Solomon 2006

2.2.3 Mozambique

Like most countries in the region, the Government of Mozambique and its development partners (donors and international NGOs) implement an array of projects and programmes that provide social protection to different groups of vulnerable citizens. Though wide ranging, these measures do not add up to a comprehensive social protection strategy that addresses all sources of vulnerability and meets all citizens’ needs. A key concern of all those involved in social protection programmes in Mozambique is lack of co-ordination, and how to address this. Some of the many interventions in place in Mozambique include unconditional cash transfers, targeted food aid programmes and targeted nutrition programmes.


Unconditional cash transfers

Mozambique has more experience with cash based direct welfare transfers than most other countries in the region, dating back to the early 1990s. Apart from the one-off grant to flood-affected households in 2001, most of these long term programmes are heavily urban biased.

Food subsidy programme: Originally initiated in 1990 as GAPVU (‘Office for Assistance to Vulnerable Populations’), this cash transfer programme was closed down because of corruption in 1997 and relaunched as INAS (‘National Institute of Social Action’) under the Ministry for Women and Co-ordination of Social Action. INAS is not a food subsidy at all, but a cash transfer intended for food purchases. Transfers are targeted at vulnerable groups who are temporarily or permanently unable to work, have no cash income and are unable to meet their basic needs – heads of poor households, the chronically sick, people with disabilities, older people, and undernourished pregnant women. The monthly cash grant is adjusted for household size and reaches 69,000 direct beneficiaries in cities and towns across the country. Being entirely government funded in a very poor country, the value of the cash transfer is small and the number of beneficiaries is limited, but the government intends to scale up the programme by extending it to rural areas, when resources permit (Collier and MacAskill 2005).

Programme to fight HIV/AIDS: This national programme was implemented in 2002 by the National Council Against Aids and the Mozambique Red Cross, and provides cash (about US$ 100 per annum) and home-based care to 5,500 people living with HIV/AIDS.

Resettlement grant for flood affected regions: In early 2001, USAID provided a cash transfer worth US$92 to 106,000 rural households affected by floods in 1999/2000, at a total cost of US$97 million. An impact evaluation found that the programme had assisted the recovery of beneficiary households and local economies (Barrientos and Smith 2005).

Targeted food aid programmes

Development Assistance Programme: The objective is to ensure that household food security and livelihoods are protected and enhanced. It transfers 50 kg maize, 10 kg beans and 10 kg soya to beneficiaries. INAS also provides ‘direct social support’ (mainly food) to 3,000 extremely impoverished urban beneficiaries on a monthly basis.

Targeted Food Distribution for Assets Preservation programme: This food-for-work programme is implemented by WFP and funded by various donors including DFID, EU, Norway and USAID. It seeks to protect livelihoods in crisis situations and enhance resilience to shocks. The programme transfers 50kg maize and 5 kg pulses per month to vulnerable communities identified by the VAC.


School feeding programme: Since 1999, WFP in partnership with the Ministry of Education has provided up to 378,000 learners with meals every day during the school term (provided they attend school for 18 days each month) and ‘take home rations’ for girls and double orphans once a month. The programme objectives are to support access to education and to reduce gender disparity in access to education and skills training.

Targeted nutrition programmes

Supplementary Feeding for Pregnant and Lactating Mothers and Other Vulnerable People: In partnership with the Ministry of Health and Population, WFP supports the improved nutrition status of mothers and malnourished children, with supplementary feeding delivered through antenatal clinics.

Support for the Special Nutritional Needs of People Living with HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, Chronically Ill and Orphans: This is implemented by WFP, with the objective of supporting the nutrition and health of children and other vulnerable people. It provides ARVs, Likuni Phala, and food packages (maize, beans, vegetable oil) monthly throughout the year to 37,000 TB patients, HIV/AIDS patients and double orphans.

2.2.4 Swaziland

Swaziland has a number of policies and strategies that are common to other countries in the region, including a National Development Strategy, a Poverty Reduction Strategy, a National Food Security Policy, a National Disaster Management Policy, a National Policy on Orphans and Vulnerable Children, and a National HIV and AIDS Strategic Plan. All these documents incorporate social protection elements, though none of them explicitly aims to co-ordinate these interventions under a single conceptual or policy framework. The closest is a draft Social Welfare Policy from 1995 that was never approved, and it is not clear that each policy or strategy is actually delivering on its stated objectives.

The Poverty Reduction Strategy and Action Plan (2005), for instance, identifies the most vulnerable groups in Swaziland as orphans, the elderly, street children, widows and people with disabilities, and concludes that “social protection schemes are crucial” for these groups. In fact the Department of Social Welfare implements a Public Assistance Programme that already delivers regular cash transfers to these and other vulnerable groups – including people with disabilities, older people, and the terminally ill. Interestingly the payment of 240 lilangeni every three months to every Swazi citizen over 60 years of age amounts to a state funded social pension (as in Lesotho), though it is not described as a social pension in Swaziland.

The World Food Programme (WFP) is implementing a set of food-based interventions in Swaziland that is fairly standard across all countries in the region. These include general food distribution, food-for-work, food assistance to food insecure households where the breadwinner is on ART and/or DOTS, wet feeding of school children and OVC, and clinic feeding


(WFP 2005). However, there are concerns in Swaziland about the targeting of food aid and its possible disincentive effects on local food production and trade.

HIV and AIDS is a major vulnerability factor throughout the region and prevalence rates now exceed 40% in Swaziland. Recent Household Income and Expenditure Surveys have found that poverty and vulnerability are higher in households with high dependency ratios, such as those with older household heads caring for young orphans. Although direct welfare transfers (of food, cash, blankets, etc) to these households are common, it is encouraging that several Ministry of Agriculture projects that are targeted at OVC – Neighbourhood Care Points (NCP), ‘chiefs fields’ (Indlunkhulu), primary school gardens and ‘OVC fields’ – transfer productive inputs (seeds, fertiliser, tools) to promote self sufficiency through agricultural livelihoods, with support from FAO.

One limitation of all projects and programmes that are funded by donors and implemented by NGOs is their limited outreach. The Neighbourhood Care Points in Swaziland, for instance, were set up by UNICEF and international NGOs. There are only 70 NCPs at present, which reach just 1,500 children, though there are plans to scale this up to 13,000 OVC.

2.2.5 Zambia

The Government of Zambia is currently formulating a National Social Protection Strategy – the first in the southern Africa region. This should have the effect of bringing together a wide range of small scale initiatives, many of which are designed, funded and implemented by international donors and local NGOs, to address specific social assistance needs of some sections of the Zambian population. The objectives of the Social Protection Strategy, due to be implemented between 2006 and 2010, are stated as including:

to increase the ability of low capacity households to meet their basic needs,

to reduce extreme poverty in incapacitated households,

to reduce the vulnerability and numbers of street children,

to improve access to health and education for people from incapacitated and low capacity households,

to reduce the vulnerability of target groups to the violation of their legal rights (RuralNet Associates 2006).

Some of these objectives imply providing social assistance or improved access to basic services for familiar ‘vulnerable groups’ – eg street children and ‘incapacitated households’. Interestingly, however, the final objective listed above relates to a ‘transformative’ social protection agenda, focusing on social exclusion rather than economic vulnerability, and introduces the rights-based agenda to social protection programming. This is innovative in the sense that no other government in the six RHVP focus countries has explicitly referred to protecting the legal rights of vulnerable citizens in their social protection initiatives.


Box 3. Kalomo District Pilot Social Cash Transfer Scheme

Since November 2003, 1,027 households (the poorest 10%) in part of Kalomo District, Zambia have received unconditional cash transfers of approximately $6-$8/month, equivalent to 50kg of maize. Though implemented by the Ministry of Community Development and Social Services, funding and technical support have come from German Technical Cooperation (GTZ). Targeting criteria include older-headed households, orphan carers, and households without productive labour. This is a social assistance programme that addresses a number of chronic vulnerability factors (such as HIV/AIDS, orphanhood, old age, and assetlessness) rather than short term shocks (such as drought). The scheme has resulted in improved food consumption, asset protection and investment, and improved nutrition and school attendance of children in beneficiary households. The intention is to make this a prototype for a permanent social welfare programme that supports those who are unable to support themselves and receive no assistance from their families or communities. As with many NGO driven initiatives, targeting is accurate but coverage is low (exclusion errors are high). The policy challenge is to scale up this pilot project as part of a national social protection system, and to institutionalise it within government with funding and administration provided by the state, not donors and NGOs.

The main government initiative in terms of formal social protection to the poor is the ‘Public Welfare Assistance Scheme (PWAS)’, implemented by the Ministry of Community Development and Social Services. PWAS aimed to provide cash and other forms of support to vulnerable households, but focused on self help initiatives, notably by forming groups in communities which should contribute their time and labour to income generating activities. PWAS reached an estimated 0.5% of the population of Zambia in 2003, below its target of 2% of the population and only a fraction of the 10% estimated to be highly vulnerable across the country. Evaluations suggest that PWAS has little discernible impact on the wellbeing of participating households. Its management and funding base are weak, and it has been overshadowed in recent years by the publicity surrounding the Kalomo Pilot Project (see Box 3), also implemented through PWAS and targeting the same population categories, but which delivers social assistance in a more effective way though on a very limited scale.

In 2005/06, Oxfam implemented a cash transfer project in Zambia and Malawi as part of the humanitarian response to the food crisis in southern Africa. For five months between October 2005 and March 2006, 14,000 households in two districts of western Zambia (Kaoma and Mongu) received the equivalent of US$25 per month, this being the value of the WFP food ration to beneficiaries of the general food distribution programme. The cash transfer project is due to be evaluated by ODI, with a focus on its impacts on households and markets and its overall effectiveness as an alternative to standard food-based emergency responses.

2.2.6 Zimbabwe

Vulnerability in Zimbabwe arises from a different configuration of factors than in other RHVP countries. Many unique vulnerability factors were induced by controversial political decisions,


such as the Fast Track Resettlement Programme, which displaced 200,000 farmworkers, Operation Restore Order, which destroyed 95,000 houses in urban informal settlements, and the politicisation of aid programmes. Economic collapse has affected both urban and rural livelihoods – business closures and retrenchments in towns and the collapse of commercial agriculture in rural areas. These retrenched urban employees and rural farm workers have become major vulnerable groups in Zimbabwe, requiring particular forms of social protection. Most farm workers enjoyed some social protection on farm, in the form of subsidised housing, subsidised food and access to basic services – all of which they lost when they lost their jobs. Little evidence is available on how many people were affected by Operation Restore Order, what has happened to them, and what forms of emergency and rehabilitation social protection they need. International NGOs such as UNICEF and local NGOs such as the Zimbabwe Parents of Children with Disabilities Association have provided shelter, food and cash to people who lost their homes during Operation Restore Order, including relocating people and assisting them to build new houses.

Zimbabwe has an extensive range of formal social protection measures, many of which were in place before the recent macro-economic and political crises, others being introduced in response to recent sharp rises in vulnerability. The National Economic Revival Programme (2003) and the Macro-Economic Policy Framework (2005-2006) set out the basis for creating specific funds (eg an ‘empowerment fund’) to benefit generally disadvantaged groups such as women, youth and people with disabilities. The government’s Poverty Alleviation Action Programme (PAAP) also includes a range of social protection measures, including the Community Action Project (CAP) and the Enhanced Social Projection Project (ESPP). The ESPP incorporated a Social Protection Strategy that aimed to reform pensions (led by the National Social Security Authority), health (affordable provision of essential drugs at public health facilities), and disaster response. Other components of the ESPP included:

Basic Education Assistance Module (BEAM): aims to reduce the number of vulnerable children dropping out and not attending school by providing fee waivers,

Children in Especially Difficult Circumstances (CEDC): provides grants to assist carers of children at risk,

Public Works: construction and maintenance of infrastructure, with payment made at the minimum wage to self target the poor.

Before the recent economic crisis, the Department of Social Welfare provided a package of social assistance to poor and vulnerable Zimbabweans that was – in theory – one of the most comprehensive in the southern Africa region, and amounted to a partial social security system. One such programme was known as Public Assistance, and provided monthly cash grants, health and education fee waivers, and sometimes food, to destitute people unable to work, citizens over 65 years old, people with disabilities, the chronically ill, and ‘children in especially difficult circumstances’. The objective of the programme was to reduce poverty through resource transfers and by enhancing the access of the poorest citizens to basic public services. An evaluation found that complex and time-consuming application procedures resulted in low inclusion errors – social workers were even required to make home visits to validate the


poverty status of applicants – but high exclusion errors (Munro 2005). The programme was urban biased and the small number of beneficiaries plus a low transfer value limited its impacts on poverty. The number of beneficiaries fell from 69,000 in 1994 to 20,500 in 1998.

Hyper-inflation is another problem unique to Zimbabwe in recent years, and one which has implications for social protection. Most importantly, although Zimbabwe is a cash-based market economy, cash transfers quickly lose much of their purchasing power while transfers in the form of commodities will at least retain their real value. Recently the Government of Zimbabwe has responded to hyper-inflation by attempting to introduce price controls on basic commodities (bread, maize-meal, cooking oil, sugar) and agricultural inputs (fertiliser, seed), but the unintended effect was to exacerbate shortages of these commodities on formal markets and drive them onto informal markets at even higher prices. The government also introduced severance packages for farmworkers who lost their jobs as a result of the Resettlement Programme, but no information is available on how many severance packages were actually paid out, how the beneficiaries used these packages, and what impact they had on reducing vulnerability. Low-income earners in Zimbabwe are exempt from paying income tax, and some basic commodities are exempt from sales tax.

Zimbabwe has held a Strategic Grain Reserve since 1992, but it has been under-stocked for the past few years, because consecutive poor harvests have reduced the surpluses available for domestic purchase and shortage of foreign exchange has constrained the government’s capacity to import maize. This situation challenges the argument that grain reserves should be held in the form of foreign exchange rather than physical stocks. Shortages of foreign exchange and difficulties in sourcing maize locally also affect other countries in the region that hold strategic grain stocks, such as Malawi, which is exploring innovative alternatives such as futures markets.

Informal social protection is delivered by a range of international NGOs and local civil society organisations. International and local NGOs provide various forms of social assistance, though usually on a small and localised scale. The STRIVE Programme provides education assistance – block grants, school fees, school feeding – to support orphans and vulnerable children. The Small Livestock Programme, implemented by Catholic Relief Services (CRS), gives vouchers for households with OVC to purchase chickens, sheep and goats, to build the household’s asset base. This is similar to Bangladesh’s Most Vulnerable Groups Programme, which builds household assets through redistribution. In a context of high price inflation, welfare support is increasingly delivered through voucher schemes. World Vision and CRS have organised seed vouchers and fairs, where vulnerable households (eg those affected by HIV and AIDS) are given vouchers to purchase seed from private sector retailers. CRS reached 25,000 households in Zimbabwe through seed vouchers and fairs in 2003 (Devereux et al 2005).

Community-based organisations such as burial societies are increasingly important or are regaining their central role in informal social protection in Zimbabwe, largely because of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the recent economic collapse. Cash remittances from urban to rural areas are believed to have declined dramatically in recent years, forcing rural communities to rely more and more on their own resources. Not enough is known about the extent and effectiveness of grassroots informal social protection institutions like burial societies, especially


at a time of exacerbated livelihood stress in poor households and communities. This is one of many knowledge gaps and policy challenges that the present situation in Zimbabwe has created.

More generally, the ongoing crisis in Zimbabwe illustrates the challenges facing the delivery of effective social protection in contexts of ‘fragile states’, or states with severe governance failures. Although Zimbabwe’s situation is unique to southern Africa at this time, it could provide lessons for other countries facing similar governance issues.


3 Conclusions and implications for RHVP

Despite recent encouraging advances in social protection thinking and practice, a number of challenges remain in the southern African region. These can be divided into three areas, each of which is discussed below: (1) gaps in social protection: the identification of unmet needs among citizens of southern Africa; (2) programmatic challenges: or issues around ensuring that social protection becomes incorporated in long term national planning frameworks and funding arrangements; (3) RHVP learning opportunities: specifically from successes and failures in social protection interventions, both within southern Africa and outside the region.

3.1 Gaps in social protection

Many sources of vulnerability and many categories of vulnerable people are inadequately covered by existing social protection arrangements. Among these gaps, two intervention areas are especially important in terms of their impacts and the numbers of people affected. On the supply side food production needs to be promoted at household and national levels, partly by facilitating access to agricultural inputs. On the demand side, market dependent food consumers need to be protected against excessive food price fluctuations, especially during the annual hungry season or pre-harvest months.

Food supply – protect consumption by promoting production: A main source of food insecurity and hunger throughout the region is under-production caused by constrained access to inputs, as prices escalated following the removal of input subsidies, phasing out of parastatal marketing, and repeated currency devaluations. Ensuring sustainable access to affordable fertiliser and seeds is a vital ‘productivity enhancing safety net’.

Access to food – address food price seasonality: Since the role of agricultural parastatals in food price stabilisation (eg consumer subsidies, price banding, grain reserve management) was scaled down or abolished, food price fluctuations have re-emerged as a major source of vulnerability for the poor – and undoubtedly exacerbated the severity of the food crisis in early 2002. No serious effort has been made to control or mitigate food price rises in the region; this issue requires urgent policy attention.

Linking both these issues is the problematic role of agricultural parastatals – institutions that in the past had a mandate to promote food security in several distinct areas:

Food production: by facilitating access to farm inputs, whether for free, subsidised, or on credit,


Crop marketing: by facilitating access to markets or acting as a guaranteed buyer of produce – mitigating the losses that farmers incur in ‘distress sales’ after harvest,

Access to food: either by controlling food prices directly or by managing food price variability through open market operations (strategic buying and selling decisions).

The standard critiques of parastatals – that they are inefficient and costly, and were often incompetently or corruptly managed – have much validity, but their closure or scaling down resulted in a vacuum in state support to agriculture and food security that has not yet been filled. Innovative approaches – such as farmers clubs and other public-private partnerships or farmer-driven initiatives – have the potential to support food production, marketing and access, and need to be supported to achieve social protection objectives.

3.2 Programming challenges

From emergency response mode to predictable risk management: Attempts to set in place long term social protection programmes are constantly derailed by pressures to respond to immediate crises. Short term emergency responses must be complemented by predictable programmes of support for the chronically vulnerable, and by longer term risk management interventions that ultimately reduce the need for emergency food aid.

Scaling up, institutionalisation and co-ordination: Small scale, unco-ordinated, donor-funded and NGO-implemented projects like the Kalomo Pilot Project in Zambia need to become national level, institutionalised, government run programmes – one component in a comprehensive and co-ordinated national social protection system. One obstacle to co-ordination is that donors are experimenting with different approaches, while another is that many governments are sceptical about expanding social protection measures.

Recognise that ‘affordability’ and ‘sustainability’ are political as much as fiscal: Lesotho’s decision to introduce a national social pension in 2004, against IMF advice and with no donor support, confirms that political will is the main determinant of whether a social protection programme is considered affordable and sustainable. Across southern Africa, domestic constituencies must be built to support social protection.

Beyond social transfers – addressing market failures: Many problems of vulnerability reflect weaknesses in markets (for food, inputs, labour, credit and savings). While social transfers can insulate individual beneficiaries against these market failures, sustainable and systemic solutions require promoting food crop trading (at local, national and regional levels), employment creation (are Employment Guarantee Schemes along Indian lines conceivable?), input markets, and financial intermediation services.


3.3 RHVP learning opportunities

Alternative approaches to enhancing access to agricultural inputs for smallholders should be comprehensively and urgently assessed. Approaches that have been trialled in the region include: input subsidies, inputs-for-work, free distribution of fertiliser and seed, input credit, removing regulatory barriers to traders, seed fairs, and new forms of farmer co-operatives. A review of lessons from past and present experiences, both within the region and beyond, should aim to identify sustainable solutions to input constraints.

Innovative approaches to food price stabilisation need to be piloted, or abandoned approaches need to be revived but adapted to contemporary circumstances (such as liberalised markets and porous borders). If free trade was encouraged rather than stifled within the region, much of the domestic grain price instability that occurs within countries would be addressed by cross-border trading. Alternatively, mechanisms that protect the poor against high food prices must be implemented and rigorously evaluated, such as food coupons, or Concern Worldwide’s food and cash transfers package in Malawi. One idea arising from recent experiences with cash transfers in southern Africa is to introduce a seasonal safety net that is implemented only for 3-4 months each year, during the annual hungry season, and is targeted on those most vulnerable to high food prices.

Experiences with unconditional cash transfers are rapidly increasing in southern Africa, with pilot projects and emergency ‘cash aid’ interventions in Malawi and Zambia supplementing longer term institutionalised social pensions in four countries – most recently in Lesotho – and child support grants in South Africa. This experience needs to be consolidated and lessons drawn across the region for future cash-based programmes.

Learn from failures: Experiments with price subsidies and price controls have generally been unsuccessful. In Malawi fertiliser subsidies were largely captured by estates or by farmers in neighbouring countries, as smallholders (the intended beneficiaries) sold their fertiliser for cash needs. In Zimbabwe price controls on bread and maize, introduced in response to hyper-inflation in 2004, failed to protect the poor, as these basic commodities became affordable but unavailable in formal markets, and available but unaffordable in informal markets. Similarly perverse outcomes could follow any attempt to reintroduce price subsidies for food or agricultural inputs, unless these are innovatively designed.

Learn from successes in social protection beyond the region: A range of innovative approaches to social protection has been introduced in other countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Some of these offer models from which governments and donors in southern Africa could learn, including:


Labour market interventions: In 2005 the Government of India passed a National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme into law, which entitles all rural households to 100 days of paid employment every year at the minimum wage, on demand.

Conditional cash transfers: In Latin America programmes like Progresa and Bolsa Escola, which transfer cash to poor households on condition they send their children to school or clinic, have raised the living standards and food security of poor households as well as improving the education and health status of children.

Asset transfers: In Bangladesh, instead of supporting consumption with transfers of cash or food aid to poor households, BRAC’s Ultra-Poor Programme transfers assets (such as small livestock) in an attempt to ‘graduate’ them sustainably out of poverty.

Unanswered questions in the design and impacts of social protection: Apart from the issues raised above, a number of other questions could be added to the list to inform the RHVP evidence-building agenda. These questions include:

• How best to target social protection measures? In all RHVP countries, social transfers have faced challenges in accurately targeting the vulnerable, no matter which approach is used, eg proxy indicators (female-headed households, for example, can lead to exclusion errors), or community-based targeting (which is susceptible to elite capture).

• What are the likely impacts of food aid on agricultural production and food marketing? All RHVP countries are concerned about the potential disincentive effects of excessive food aid imports on farmers and traders at a time when the volumes of emergency and non-emergency food aid (eg school feeding and food-for-work) are increasing.

• Are cash transfers inflationary? As momentum grows in favour of unconditional cash transfers, there are concerns that the evidence base is too limited. Not enough is known, for instance, about whether cash transfers will cause food price inflation in contexts where markets are weak.

• How significant is informal cross-border trade in stabilising food prices and supplies within the region? Although cross-border trade is known to be important throughout southern Africa, more needs to be known about its magnitude, and about the many constraints that private traders face in moving commodities from deficit to surplus areas, including licensing regulations and unpredictable shifts in government policies.

• What are the cumulative (as against the immediate) beneficial or detrimental effects of different social protection approaches and mechanisms? Over time, interventions such as cash transfers might generate more substantial positive


impacts on livelihoods than, say, targeted inputs, but at present we have insufficient empirical evidence about this, or about the impacts of delivering a package of support rather than single instruments.


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Social protection mechanisms in Southern Africa| Page 27 June 2006 | Final


Annex. Summary of Selected Country Programmes Lesotho

Programme title

Food aid programme HIV/AIDS programme Old age pension act Primary school feeding Public assistance programme

Programme type

Food aid Health and care Non-contributory pension/ unconditional cash transfer

School feeding Unconditional cash transfer

Agencies involved

World Food Programme, C-SAFE (World Vision, CRS, CARE, etc), United Nations, Council of NGOs

Lesotho Aids Programme Co-ordinating Authority; funded by Development Corporation Ireland (DCI), Global Fund, IDA

Department of Pensions, Ministry of Finance & Planning

Ministry of Education and Training

Department of Social Welfare

Year started 1970s 1992 2004

Programme description

Longstanding programme to improve food security to vulnerable households

Comprehensive programme of support to those living with HIV/AIDS

Unconditional monthly transfer of cash to over 70s

Provides food to children who attend school

Ongoing programme of social assistance to vulnerable groups who apply in time of need

Programme objectives

To make transfers of food as a safety net to the chronically vulnerable and as protection to the transitorily vulnerable

Arrest rate of HIV/AIDS infection

To support citizens as they lose the ability to do things for themselves

Supplementary feeding to needy children

To provide a safety net for all vulnerable groups

Transfers Monthly food parcels Testing, counselling, home care and selective

Cash: M1,800 monthly (CC) Conditional transfer of food (if children attend

Cash


Programme title

Food aid programme HIV/AIDS programme Old age pension act Primary school feeding Public assistance programme

medication 150 Maloti/month (US$25) school)

Targeting School children, pregnant and lactating mothers, chronically and transitorily food insecure

People living with HIV/AIDS, 60,000 beneficiaries

All citizens aged 70 or over register with the District Administration, and present their passport, voters registration card or affidavit as proof of age and a photograph

All school children Old aged, orphans ,chronically ill, disabled

Coverage National National National: 69,450 beneficiaries

National National

Cost M89,000,000 M16,330,000 M124,286,400 (cost of transfer) plus M3,000,000 (administration)

M29,000,000 M11,000,000

Other issues Government pays M25 million; the rest is external

Government contributes M2,000,000

Government provides M9,000,000


Malawi

Programme title Safety net for chronically ill affected households

Targeted Food Distribution for Assets Preservation

Improving Livelihoods Through Increasing Food Security (I-LIFE)

Integrated Food Security

Government of Malawi/EU Public Works Programme

Special Government Public Works Programme

Development Assistance Programme

Programme type Targeted food transfer

Food-for-work Food-for-work Rain fed programme; irrigation

Public works programmes

Food-for-work Targeted food transfer;

food-for-work

Agencies involved Implemented by CARE, funded by USAID

Implemented by WFP; funded by various donors including DFID, EU, Norway & USAID

Implemented by CARE; funded by USAID

Save the Children US

Implemented by National Authorising Officer through a Project Management Unit; funded by EU

Implemented by Ministry of Transport & Public Works; funded by Malawi government

Implemented by Save the Children (US);

funded by USAID as part of I-Life

Year started 2004-2009 2005 2004-2009 2004-2006 2002-2005 2005-2009 2004-2009

Programme objectives To maintain nutritional status, account for increased calorie & protein needs of the infected, ease time & resource constraints of care givers & allow other family members to

To protect livelihoods in crisis situations and enhance resilience to shocks

To rehabilitate rural feeder roads by providing food for work to community participants in order to increase accessibility by producers to marketing & commerce

To improve livelihood and food security of vulnerable households through improved access to farm inputs

To contribute to the government’s objective of poverty alleviation and food security

To improve transport infrastructure for ease of smallholder farmer access to markets and economic services

To ensure food security and livelihoods among households are protected and enhanced









pursue productive livelihoods

Transfers 50kg maize meal, 10kg Likuni phala, 5kg pulses, 4l vegetable oil

Once a month

50kg maize, 5kg pulses

Once a month

50kg maize meal, 5kg pulses

Given 20 days a month

50kg urea, 10kg OPV

Oct-Mar for the rain fed programme; Apr-Oct for the irrigation programme

Cash: MWK60 per day

Cash: MWK200 for full days’ work

8 months of the year (not during rainy season)

50kg maize, 10kg beans, 10kg soya

All year for free food distribution; 3 months a year for food for work

Targeting Families with a chronically ill person

Vulnerable communities as identified by MVAC

Female headed households, elderly headed households, child headed households, families with a chronically ill person

Households caring for orphans, chronically ill, elderly who are resource poor, child headed households

Take place in poor rural communities

Able-bodied persons who are able to do a full day’s work

Household hosting at least 2 orphans, family with a chronically ill person, malnourished children, pregnant and lactating mothers

Coverage Seven districts: Lilongwe, Dedza, Mchinji, Mangochi, Phalombe,

Seven districts: Nsaje, Chikwawa, Phalombe, Mulanje,

Seven districts: Lilongwe, Dedza, Mchinji, Mangochi, Phalombe, Mulanje

Nkhotakota,

Balaka,

Dedza

Lilongwe, Dowa, Mchinji, Ntchisi, Kasungu, Salima, Nkhotakota

National Dedza









Mulanje & Thyolo Chiradzulu, Zomba, Machinga

& Thyolo Mangochi

Operational effectiveness Participating family must have: able bodied above 16yrs, one person per HH, no member of HH already collecting other food benefits, landless, assetless.

Participating family must have: able bodied above 16yrs, one person per HH, no member of HH already collecting other food benefits, landless, assetless.

Criteria for allocation: chronically ill, elderly, child headed household.

Low wage rates and temporary nature of work mean that such programmes can never be conflated with employment creation. Poverty mapping has shown the targeting of this programme to be effective.

Conditions - Some amount of work by a family member for food-for-work.

Presence of one or more people as described in (i)

Welfare outcomes Beneficiaries: 59,000 for I-LIFE Consortium but 4,000 for CARE

1.9 million beneficiaries

Beneficiaries: 59,000 for I-LIFE Consortium but 4,000 for CARE

Beneficiaries: 3,000 households

2,863,140 man days or

102,255 man days per district for a total of 28 districts

Beneficiaries:

Food-for -work: 1,655

Free food: 2,276

Cost US$70,000 for 5 years

US$70,000 for 5 years

US$991,776 for 3 years

€21m MK869m (year 1)

MK263m (year 2)

MK263m (year 3)


Malawi (2)

Programme title

Therapeutic Feeding Programme

School feeding programme

Malawi Social Action Fund (MASAF)

Supplementary Feeding for Pregnant & Lactating Mothers & Other Vulnerable People

Support for Refugees

Support for Special Nutritional Needs of People Living with HIV/AIDS; TB, Chronically Ill & Orphans

Programme type

Nutrition programme

School feeding Public works programmes Nutrition programme

Targeted food transfer

Nutrition programme

Agencies involved

Implemented by WFP in partnership with the Ministry of Health & Population; funded by various donors: EU, UNICEF, etc

WFP in partnership with the Ministry of Education

Implemented by District Local Assemblies (DLA) and communities; funded by World Bank (IDA)

Implemented by WFP in partnership with the Ministry of Health & Population; funded by various donors: EU, DFID, UNICEF, etc

Implemented by WFP, UNHCR, Malawi Government; funded by various donors

Implemented by WFP; funded by various donors

Year started 1999 1999 Since 1996; current phase from 2004-2007

2004 (pilot project)


To support to the improved nutritional status of critically malnourished children

To support access to education and reduce gender disparity in access to education and skills training

To increase the stock of socio-economic assets for service provision; to increase sustainable access to basic socio-economic services; to transfer cash incomes to poor and vulnerable households through labour intensive public works; to enhance

To support the improved nutrition status of children, mothers and other vulnerable people

To save lives in crisis situations

To support the improved nutrition and health status of children and other vulnerable people


Programme title







participatory development management capacities at community and district levels.

Transfers Cooking oil, Likuni Phala, skim milk for children, maize meal, beans & oil

Given out monthly throughout the year

Wet feeding every day during school time,

Take home rations for girls once a month.

Cash: MK43 per day (20% below minimum wage)

During the rainy season (crop growing season) the scheme is not operational.

Likuni Phala for under-5s, maize meal for the rest

Both given once a month

50kg maize meal, 4l vegetable oil, 7.5kg pulses

Once a month throughout the year

ARVs for AIDS patients, Likuni Phala, vegetable oil, 7.5kg pulses, 50kg maize.

Households with orphans get 7.5kg pulses & 50kg maize monthly.

Targeting Severely malnourished under-5 children

School-going children

Geographic targeting to identify the poorest areas, community targeting

Malnourished under-5 children and pregnant and lactating mothers

Refugees registered with UNHCR and Malawi government

TB patients, HIV/AIDS patients & double orphans

Coverage Throughout the whole country as per MoHP recommendations

10 districts including Kasungu, Nkhata-Bay, Salima, Dedza, Ntcheu, Mangochi, Thyolo, Nsanje, Chikwawa & Lilongwe

National National Dzalanyama and Luwani Refugee camps

Support to TB patients in Balaka, Machinga, Salima; ARV programme in Chitipa, Dowa, Zomba, Chikwawa, Lilongwe


Programme title







Operational effectiveness

Conditional: severely malnourished child to be admitted to a nutritional rehabilitation centre

Girls are expected to attend school at least for 18 days a month to qualify for rations

Conditional: malnourished children to attend ante-natal clinics

There must be more than 600 refugees at a camp for WFP to support

Welfare outcomes

Beneficiaries: 3,000 children and 3,000 caretakers

Beneficiaries: 210,000 per year

Depend on number of successful projects per district

Beneficiaries:

10-12,000 for people on ARVs

10-12,000 for TB patients

22,000 orphans

Cost US$9m for 3 years, with each sub-project not to exceed US$100,000. Average cost of community managed projects US$5,000 – US$30,000; US$40,000 for Local Assembly managed projects.


Mozambique

Programme title

Income generation programme

Community-based health programme



Food subsidy programme Support for Special Nutritional Needs of People Living with HIV/ AIDS; TB, Orphans, Chronically ill

Programme type

Income generation

Health Targeted food transfer

Food-for-work Food subsidy Nutrition programme

Agencies involved

National Institute for Social Welfare (INAS) and selected local partners

Implemented by Mozambique Red Cross; funded by Red Cross, local civil society organisations

Implemented by WFP; funded by various including DFID, EU, Norway and USAID

National Institute of Social Action (Instituto Nacional de Acção Social, INAS) under the Ministry for Women and Co-ordination of Social Action

Implemented by WFP;

funded by various donors

Year started 1998 Since the early 1980s

Cash transfer started in 1990 as GAPVU; in 1997 GAPVU was dissolved because of corruption scandals, and the food subsidy programme was taken over by INAS


Financial support for vulnerable groups to start income generating activities

Programme of monthly cash transfers as food subsidy to vulnerable groups


Promotion of income generating

Door to door visits and first aid, support for

To ensure food security and livelihoods among

To protect livelihoods in crisis situations

To minimize economic impact of structural adjustment programmes on poor urban households; to

To support the improved nutrition and health status of


Programme title






activities construction of health facilities

households are protected and enhanced

and enhance resilience to shocks

provide direct assistance to those permanently unable to work; support basic needs for those in absolute poverty

children and other vulnerable people

Transfers Beneficiaries selected by local leaders and use of poverty profiles

Different types of support based on target groups needs

50 kg maize, 10 kg beans, 10kg soya

50kg maize, 5kg pulses

Monthly

Monthly cash transfer: MZM 70,000 to 140,000, depending on household size

(1USD= 25,000)

ARVs for AIDS patients

Likuni Phala, vegetable oil, 7.5kg pulses, 50kg maize to households keeping orphans

Provided monthly throughout the year

Targeting Women-headed households; mothers or supervisors of undernourished children; community groups in extreme poverty

Vulnerable communities where the level of incidence is very high special on women and children, elders, and disable people

Vulnerable communities as identified by MVAC

Vulnerable groups (older people, chronically sick, people with disabilities, undernourished pregnant women)

Those who live alone or are household heads of needy households who are:

elderly women (over 55) and men (over 60) who are unable to work and have no source of income,

physically handicapped who are over 18 unable to work and living alone or heading a chronically

TB patients, HIV/AIDS patients & double orphans


Programme title






poor household,

chronically sick over 18 unable to work living alone or heading a chronically poor household,

malnourished pregnant women.

Coverage Rural areas and selected urban areas across the country

National All provincial capital cities and selected district towns.

Extension to rural areas is a priority, but since food subsidy has no donor funding and is 100% dependent on the state budget, much will depend on the political leadership of MMAS in negotiating funds.


Allocation criteria: status (one of the groups targeted); age (certified by Identity Card); resident in the area for 6 months or more; Per capita monthly income less than 70,000 MT; chronically sick; malnourished pregnant women with anaemia or low weight gain.

Target number of direct beneficiaries cited in Social and Economic Plan 2005 is 92,300 – the current number of direct


Programme title






beneficiaries thus represents75% of the planned target for 2005

Welfare outcomes

Beneficiaries: 2,000; estimated 9,000 by 2006

About 1 million beneficiaries per year

69,095 heads of households received the monthly food subsidy in 2005

Cost MZM 56,000,000 Around US$1m/year

MZM 165,000,000

7086.5 million meticais (2005)


Mozambique (2)

Programme title School feeding programme

Direct social support programme


Support to orphan children

Programme to fight HIV/AIDS

Programme type

School feeding Various Nutrition programme Orphan support Home-based care

Agencies involved

WFP in partnership with the Ministry of Education

2001 to date within INAS; since 1995 under another institution

Implemented by WFP in partnership with Ministry of Health & Population; funded by various including EU, DFID, UNICEF

Implemented by Mozambique Red Cross; funded by other Red Cross societies and international organisations

Implemented by Mozambique Red Cross; funded by International Red Cross: Germany, Norway, Spain, UK and the National Council Against AIDS

Year started 1999 2001 to date within INAS; since 1995 under another institution

1990 2002


Ad hoc programme providing various support to the extremely impoverished as required


Support access to education and reduce gender disparity in access to education and skills training

To provide social support to the extremely impoverished

Support the improved nutrition status of children, mothers and other vulnerable people

Children placed with substitute families; support to children’s education; cultural activities; food aid and health care

Home-based care to people living with HIV/AIDS with small food security projects

Transfers Wet feeding every day during school time,

Variable, depending on the type of support (food

Throughout the year but transfers given once a

Around US$ 100


Programme title School feeding programme

Direct social support programme


Support to orphan children

Programme to fight HIV/AIDS

Take home rations for girls given once a month

monthly; construction whenever needed)

month. Malnourished children must attend ante-natal clinics

Targeting All school-going children in an area for wet feeding – must attend school 18 days a month

Girls and double orphans for take home rations

Orphans, vulnerable groups, users of government social unities. Need to prove low income, residential constraints.

Malnourished under-5 children and pregnant and lactating mothers

Children living in streets in Maputo and Beira cities.

Infected people who are seriously ill and living under very poor conditions.

Coverage All provincial capital cities and selected districts

National Maputo City and Beira City

National

Welfare outcomes

3,000 beneficiaries per year 265 children assisted on average per year

5,500 beneficiaries

Cost MZM 15,000,000; expect to reach MZM 30,000,000 in 2006

Around US$100,000/year Around US$500,000


Swaziland

Programme title

Food for assets Backyard gardens Child welfare Community gardens

Food aid 3 by 5 support (part of WHO’s “treat 3 million by 2005” programme)

Programme type Food for work Agricultural inputs Access to services Agricultural inputs Emergency food aid Targeted food aid

Agencies involved Implemented by NGO; funded by WFP

Implemented by FAO and MOAC; funded by FAO and South Africa

Implemented by Social Welfare Department/government; funded by Swaziland government


Implemented by World Vision, ACAT, LDS with subcontracts to Red Cross, Save the Children, SFDF;

funded by WFP

Implemented by Ministry of Health – Hospitals, funded by WFP

Year started 2006 (due to start) 2004-2005 1976 2004 2002 2005 to May 2006


Volunteers for community projects (infrastructure such as dams for farm irrigation) or training programmes receive weekly take home rations.

Food insecure households affected by drought, poverty and HIV/AIDS are provided with monthly food rations in targeted communities.

Follows on from the WHO’s “treat 3 million by 2005” programme to provide ARVs


To improve household food security and participation in community activities

Provide AIDS patients with fresh nutritious vegetables

Partial payment of fees to increase enrolment and retention

Help communities produce food and income

To provide patients on ARV with food


Programme title

Food for assets Backyard gardens Child welfare Community gardens

Food aid 3 by 5 support (part of WHO’s “treat 3 million by 2005” programme)

Transfers Maize meal, pulses, vegetable oil

Conditional on willingness to work

One off transfer of garden inputs: seed, tools, fertiliser, fencing etc worth US$300

Annual payment of school fees; government is considering social grants.

One off transfer of garden inputs: seed, tools, fertiliser, fencing etc worth US$100 per beneficiary

Monthly distribution of Maize meal, corn soya blend, oil

Corn soya blend, given monthly

Targeting Vulnerable households AIDS affected Orphaned children 7 communities Drought affected vulnerable people with no harvest

Patients on ART

Coverage Drought prone agro zones National National Drought prone areas nationally

Lubombo, Shiselweni, Manzini

6 hospitals

Welfare outcomes Targeting 10,500 community members in 2006

700 beneficiaries Variable numbers of beneficiaries; intended to assist 60,000

350 beneficiaries

(7 communities x 50 members per community)

92,000 beneficiaries 7,000 beneficiaries

Cost US$21,000

Swaziland government provided personnel

250,000 Lilangeni US$35,000;

Swaziland government contributes personnel

Total cost unknown; government contributes 5 million lilangeni


Swaziland (2)

Programme title

Philani Maswati charity organization

Input Trade Fairs (Seed Fairs)

Maternal and Child Health and under 5 support

Neighbourhood Care Point (NCP) gardens

NCPs OVC fields Indlunkhulu/chiefs’ fields

Programme type Various Agricultural inputs Conditional food transfer

Agricultural inputs Conditional food transfer

Agricultural inputs Agricultural inputs

Agencies involved Implemented by Philani Maswati; various

funders


Implemented by Ministry of Health –Hospitals; funded by WFP

Implemented by FAO and MOAC;

funded by South African government through FAO

Implemented by communities, DPMs office, Lutsango;

funded by WFP and UNICEF


Implemented by FAO MOAC micro projects, NERCHA; funded by FAO micro projects/ South Africa

Year started 1986 2004 2005 2004 2004 2004 2004


Each community should have a Neighbourhood Care Point (NCP), to provide for the feeding, psycho-social support and informal education for their orphans and vulnerable children. Gardens are created at NCPs to promote food security and encourage good nutrition,


Programme title






especially among OVCs


To improve the quality of life of the elderly

Provide farming inputs To improve nutritional status of under 5s, pregnant and lactating mothers

To provide sustainable source of fresh nutritious vegetables

To increase access to food for OVC/provide at least one meal a day

To increase access to food for OVC and other vulnerable members of the community

Transfers Food items (also burial services, clothing and wheelchairs when available and when required)

Annual vouchers to purchase inputs, worth $30 per household

Corn soya blend given monthly, conditional on attendance at MCH

One off transfer of garden inputs: seed, tools, fertiliser, fencing etc

Conditional: meal to those that attend NCP

Inputs for dryland farming, worth $2 per person

Annual provision of seeds (maize, legumes sorghum sweet potato) and other inputs, worth about US$33

Targeting The aged (over 70 years)

Poor farmers affected by drought

Pregnant or lactating mothers, under 5s

Pre primary OVCs Pre primary OVC OVCs OVCs

Coverage National Drought prone communities nationwide

National, 51 clinics

70 NCPs covered 252 NCPs, nationally

Drought prone communities nationwide

National

Monitoring and evaluation

Reviewed by annual FAO/WFP missions


Programme title







The project was successful and is recommended to be continued. This project should be expanded and implemented throughout the country with particular emphasis on farmers affected by drought in 2004/05

There is a total of close to 450 NCPs in the country; number to be expanded.

FAO believe this to be effective, and have committed to further targeting OVC food security through NCPs

A successful example of sustainable approaches to assisting orphan-headed households and other labour stressed households with PLWA. This project could be replicated in other chiefdoms. Targeting is recognised as a problem, not all OVC and vulnerable community members are accessing the food.

Welfare outcomes 10,000 households benefit annually

12,000 beneficiaries

2,100 beneficiaries receive an average of US$2000 each

25,000 beneficiaries

Beneficiaries: 50 OVCs per community and 250 fields

9,631 OVC beneficiaries in 315 communities A


Programme title






FAO assessment report observed some good examples of indlunkhulu chiefdom fields in the Sipofaneni areas.

Cost Lilangeni 400,000

US$500,000.

Swaziland government contributes personnel and technical expertise

US$140,000 (70 x US$2000). Swaziland government contributes personnel

US$25,000

(US$100 x 250)

Swaziland government provides personnel and technical expertise

US$315,000

(US$1,000 x 315)

Swaziland government provides personnel and technical expertise

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