This report presents qualitative and participatory research findings on beneficiary and community perceptions of five unconditional cash transfer programmes in the Middle East and North Africa and in sub-Saharan Africa. It finds that cash transfers are not only critical to meeting basic consumption costs but are also key to increasing people’s sense of self-worth, dignity and control over their lives. Within households, cash transfers can affect power dynamics, and at community level they can promote social cohesion. Implementation challenges highlighted include targeting flaws, payment delays, inadequate grievance channels, and the need to strengthen links with complementary services. Policy recommendations include the need to: adequately plan and cost capacity building for programme implementers; invest in citizen awareness-raising and communications; and institutionalise spaces for interaction between beneficiaries and programme implementers, including participatory monitoring and evaluation processes.
The report summarises key features of each cash transfer programme studied and the extent to which programme objectives address empowerment, social justice, social cohesion and citizenship alongside economic vulnerability. It considers positive experiences and concerns at the individual, household and community levels, as well as beneficiary and community views on programme governance and accountability.
Overall, beneficiaries view unconditional cash transfers as an important component in their repertoire of coping strategies. To varying degrees study respondents noted that the CT programmes had had positive effects in contributing to tackling the range of economic, social and psycho-social vulnerabilities they face.
Some programme design features have made a significant contribution to these positive impacts, including: (1) clear linkages to an overarching national social protection policy framework; (2) efforts to streamline social assistance into a single registry or information management system that can be shared at all levels and across agencies; (3) use of a poverty-focused targeting mechanism resulting in a good level of inclusion of extremely poor people; and (4) combining cash transfers with a package of assistance such as food aid, fee waivers for basic services and/or social health insurance coverage.
But a number of key areas – especially with regard to programme implementation, monitoring and evaluation – need to be strengthened to tackle the multidimensional nature of poverty and vulnerability more effectively, alongside improvements in human resource capacity and greater community involvement in decision-making:
- Targeting needs to be improved, not only to reduce inclusion and exclusion errors but also to extend support to the most vulnerable groups (for instance, by using ‘destitution’ rather than ‘orphanhood’ as criteria for OVC programme eligibility).
- The transfer amount should be reconsidered, with payments indexed to inflation while exploring options to increase the level of support based on household size.
- Payment modalities also need to be revised in order to reduce time expended in accessing them, especially in the sub-Saharan African cases.
- More investment is needed in capacity-building for programme implementers at all levels to increase staff awareness of the needs of the most vulnerable households, to support participatory M&E processes, and to exploit opportunities for cross-agency synergies.
- There should be greater investment in awareness-raising among beneficiaries and the wider community to improve information flow and accountability, using radio and print media to communicate key information and success stories.
- Programme governance and accountability needs to be improved, including by introducing or strengthening participatory feedback/grievance and M&E mechanisms.
- Developing a national registry system, alongside mapping complementary services and programmes, could help to strengthen coordination among government agencies, NGOs, and civil society or religious service providers.
- Programmes could develop more tailored packages of support so that recipients benefit from links to complementary forms of social assistance (e.g. asset transfers, fee waivers), social security and social services, with separate packages designed to meet the specific needs of people with disabilities and the chronically ill. Viable programme graduation pathways are needed for able-bodied working-age beneficiaries.
- Behaviour change communication efforts are also needed to promote shifts in discriminatory social norms.
- To improve programme sustainability, government funding commitments (to social protection in general and cash transfers in particular) need to be increased to avoid over-reliance on volatile donor funding.
A briefing paper (PDF, 2.2 MB) is also available.
