wahenga.net promotes awareness and advocacy
on social transfers and social protection
in southern Africa

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This website aims to reach a wide and diverse audience and to encourage that audience to engage in the hunger and vulnerability debate by promoting awareness, understanding and advocacy on social protection and social transfers, as well as build knowledge and understanding of the multi-dimensional character of poverty, hunger and vulnerability across southern Africa.


In Focus

  • 16 August 2010

    In a new article in Poverty & Public Policy by Stephen Devereux and Philip White, which takes a look at social protection initiatives in Africa, the authors conclude that initiatives that emerge out of domestic political agendas and respond to local conceptualizations and prioritizations of need are more likely to succeed than those based on imported “projectized” models, but that success depends on a convergence of three agendas.

    To read more about these three agendas and download the full article, go to http://www.psocommons.org/ppp/vol2/iss3/art5

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Wahenga Comments

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  • Sissy Teese
    21 July 2010

    Sissy Teese has taken up the gauntlet once again with the World Bank. This time, the object of her wrath is a new paper by the Bank entitled Rewarding STI Prevention and Control in Tanzania (with, according to Teese, “the horrendously contrived acronym of RESPECT”) which provides quarterly cash transfers, each equivalent to nearly one-tenth of average annual income, to those who avoid unsafe sex. Calling it “the most expensive condom in African history”, Teese questions the economic viability of this experiment.

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  • 12 July 2010

    Is there a link between social pensions and a decrease in the number of children born in sub-Saharan Africa? This Comment summarises the findings by Göran Holmqvist of the Nordic Africa Institute in a new paper which suggests there is.

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  • Nicholas Freeland
    22 June 2010

    Hot on the heels of RHVP’s meeting with IDS, ODI and DEV, which resulted in the joint statement on Social Protection in Africa: Where Next?, the Programme Director of RHVP, Nicholas Freeland, picks up on an errant formula which emerged at the meeting, was met with general derision, and was unceremoniously dropped from further discussion. But he sees some value in the equation, because it helps not only to understand the role of social protection in tackling vulnerability, but also to explain the difficulty of getting consensus on national social protection programmes in Africa. The equation is: vulnerability = poverty + risk – empowerment.

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