The 2017-2018 Annual Trends and Outlook Report (ATOR) takes an in-depth look at social protection in rural Africa to address these three questions, which are particularly relevant as Africa embarks on the implementation of the Malabo Declaration commitments and the African Union’s Agenda 2063. First, the contributed chapters summarize and synthesize the available evidence on successful implementation of social protection programs in rural Africa.
The purpose of this chapter is to give policy makers insights into how to design cost-effective social protection programs. Focusing on social assistance (noncontributory transfers to the poor), we review the literature with respect to three key features of the decision to put such a program in place: targeting, choice of payment modality, and graduation.
Chapter 10 uses Egypt as a case study to examine the effectiveness of proxy means test (PMT) targeting. Targeting effectiveness is defined in terms of the ability of the program to enroll beneficiaries from the lowest two quintiles of the expenditure distribution. The authors also consider the social costs of implementing PMT in a context where administrative capacity to explain the targeting mechanism to the public is imperfect.
The author of Chapter 9 draws on in-depth knowledge of a set of recent and active social protection programs implemented in eastern Africa to discuss three challenges inherent to poverty-targeting that constrain the achievement of program objectives. These challenges are the difficulty of identifying the poorest among the poor, heterogeneity in household characteristics within a target population that is assumed to be relatively homogeneous, and provision of “individual/household” transfers in diverse social and cultural contexts.
Chapter 8 provides a comparative analysis of 48 graduation, livelihood, and cash transfer programs. Using income and consumption as the primary metrics of impact and focusing on long-term outcomes, the author assesses the sustainability of impact of these programs and compares both costs and impacts across the three types of approaches.
This chapter aims to provide an overview of the role of social protection in improving child well-being and care in Africa by considering progress made and gaps to be addressed. First, it reflects on coverage, highlighting the rapid expansion of social protection and reflecting on undercoverage among particular groups of children. Second, it provides an overview of the impact of social protection on children, considering direct and indirect income effects, psychosocial and behavioral effects, and structural constraints.
The chapter is centered on assessing the impact of WFP’s food assistance on the food security and nutrition outcomes of rural households in the Mopti region of Mali. In our assessment, we relied on data from a unique precrisis baseline to design a longitudinal, quasi-experimental study based on two survey rounds executed five years apart. Data were collected from 66 communities randomly selected from within food-insecure districts.
Building on the existing literature, this chapter synthesizes the key findings of the From Protection to Production (PtoP) project of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), which studies the impact of SCT (social cash transfer) programs on household economic decision making. The cash transfer programs studied here are government-run cash transfer programs in SSA.
This chapter investigates the conceptual and empirical linkages between social grants and agricultural entrepreneurship among rural households in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. Understanding the theoretical and empirical relationship between social transfers and smallholder entrepreneurship can enable policy makers to improve the design of rural development policy interventions and create synergies between cash transfers and poverty reduction by promoting enhanced agricultural productivity and production.
In this chapter, critical lessons and insights regarding the effects of social protection on agriculture are drawn from an assessment of the benefits and challenges of linking social protection with agriculture using the experiences of and empirical findings from the Ethiopian Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP)—the second-largest social protection program in Africa.
