Third of a series of blog posts on the release of the 2017-18 Annual Trends and Outlook Reports (ATORs) at the 2018 ReSAKKS Annual Conference in Addis Ababa Oct. 24-26. This year's ATOR theme is social protection. Read the first post here and the second here.

First of a series of blog posts on the release of the 2017-18 Annual Trends and Outlook Reports (ATORs) at the 2018 ReSAKKS Annual Conference in Addis Ababa Oct. 24-26. This year's ATOR theme is social protection. Read the second here and the third here.

Addis-Abeba, le 24 octobre 2018 : Après une longue période de stagnation et de déclin économique, les économies africaines ont connu une croissance rapide au cours des deux dernières décennies. La pauvreté et la malnutrition ont diminué de manière constante au cours de cette période. En raison de la détérioration généralisée des moyens de subsistance, une plus longue période de croissance continue sera nécessaire pour sortir les larges segments de la population de leur situation de vulnérabilité.

Addis Ababa, October 24, 2018: After a prolonged period of economic stagnation and decline, African economies have experienced rapid growth over the last two decades. Poverty and malnutrition have fallen steadily during that period. Because of broad deterioration of livelihoods, it will take a longer period of continued growth to pull large segments of the population out of vulnerability. In fact, despite falling poverty rates, the absolute number of poor and vulnerable is still rising.

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.

Chapter 13 provides an overarching account of findings on social protection as development policy and draws out lessons for policy makers when adopting a systems approach to social protection.

In line with the role of the ATOR as the official monitoring and evaluation report for CAADP, Chapter 12 monitors progress on CAADP indicators outlined in the CAADP Results Framework 2015–2025. The chapter also reviews progress in the CAADP implementation process across the continent, including a look at trends in government social protection expenditures.

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.