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Frontiers of Social Protection Briefs

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This Frontiers of Social Protection (FoSP) series of briefs aims to summarise the main findings of the respective FoSP studies in a concise and accessible format that will be appreciated by policymakers and practitioners concerned with hunger, vulnerability and social protection in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries, and that will support RHVP's policy dialogue activities and other dissemination events.

The FoSP studies aim to ensure that the knowledge from policy analysis on hunger and vulnerability that RHVP provides to policymakers remains relevant and reflects advances on a number of key social protection frontiers. The studies build on the research activities of RHVP's first phase (2005-08), in particular the Regional Evidence Building Agenda (REBA), which involved 20 commissioned case studies of social protection programmes in southern Africa and a series of cross-cutting thematic analyses. Like the REBA, the FoSP work is demand-led, focusing on a number of 'hot topics' prioritised by stakeholders across the region and incorporating new evidence that is continually emerging on the practicalities and impacts of delivering large scale social protection.

  • Frontiers of Social Protection Brief Number 1: Fertiliser subsidies and social cash transfers
    September 2009

    This brief places emphasis on fertiliser subsidies and social cash transfers as alternative, but overlapping, policy instruments for protecting chronically vulnerable people from hunger. When undertaken as scaled-up programmes, each of these policies entails a regular annual budget commitment by government, but involves different mechanisms by which vulnerability reduction is tackled in the short- and long-run. To the extent that they address the different needs of different vulnerable groups, or different time horizons for their effectiveness, they can be seen as complementary policies. On the other hand, they both compete for scarce public resources, and each represents an ‘opportunity cost' compared to the other with respect to their relative success at achieving vulnerability reduction outcomes. The objective of this briefing paper is to examine in detail the comparisons, contrasts and trade-offs between these two policy instruments. This is an important task since it may indicate adjustments in the relative funding priority that is attached to each of them in order to enhance their complementarity in pursuit of the common goal that they both strive to achieve.

  • Frontiers of Social Protection Brief Number 2: Poverty targeting
    October 2009

    Poverty targeting has generated quite a polarised debate concerning the way forward for social protection policy in southern Africa and elsewhere in the continent. The main lines of this debate involve contrasting some form of categorical provision (for example, pensions for all people over 65, or grants for all children under five) with restricted provision to those most urgently in need of continuous support from the state (the destitute and those quite unable for one reason or another to provide for themselves). All such transfers are 'targeted' in one way or another, however criteria differ from the simple (e.g. an age threshold) to the quite complex (a set of proxy indicators for deprivation, such as lacking able bodied adults in the household, a high ratio of dependents, or eating one meal a day). The term ‘poverty targeting' refers to this problem of deciding the rules and the practice of restricting social transfers to the most seriously deprived individuals and families in society. This brief focuses on the proportion of the population in a poor country that should be reached by a poverty targeted transfer, and the income distribution effects of the transfer once it is made. It explores these aspects using data from large-scale household surveys in Ghana and Malawi.

  • Frontiers of Social Protection Brief Number 3: Electronic delivery of social cash transfers
    February 2010

    In April 2008, RHVP published a thematic brief on delivery systems for social transfers, reporting on the variety of delivery systems used in the 20 social protection programme case studies that were analysed as part of the Regional Evidence Building Agenda (REBA). With the growing popularity of cash transfers relative to other social transfers, emphasis has shifted to investigating innovative delivery mechanisms that increase effectiveness and efficiency. A number of public (government-to-person) cash transfer projects and programmes, including some covered within the REBA, have experimented with the use of electronic delivery systems. There is a growing body of literature highlighting the benefits of electronic delivery of cash transfers (see, for example, Langhan et al, 2008; Bankable Frontier Associates, 2006) and the acceptability of high technology mechanisms to recipients, so this brief concentrates on perspectives relevant to private sector partners. It elaborates changes in the business environment that have prompted an increase in the potential for electronic delivery systems (including those initially intended for private person-to-person transfers such as remittances), provides an update on the existing use of such systems in Kenya, Malawi, Namibia and Swaziland and outlines interest from Ghana, Lesotho and Mozambique.