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.
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Wahenga Comments |
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'Anonymous' comments on the continuing debate around unconditional and conditional cash transfers, as highlighted by Sissy Teese and the World Bank.
In “The World Bank’s New Social Protection Model: Conspirational Cash Transfers”, Sissy Teese accuses us of being part of a conspiracy to promote CCT (as opposed to unconditional transfers, UCT) and manipulating evidence for that purpose. The reality is that it is her note that follows a conspirational approach… none of us believe that CCT are necessarily superior to UCT: as is often the case with public policies, the choice of instrument is dependent on the goals being pursued and the conditions under which those policies are implemented. What we firmly believe in is the importance of basing those choices on solid evidence and, consequently, consistently seek to generate and disseminate such evidence.
Is there a conspiracy afoot? Sissy Teese examines the World Bank's analysis of cash transfer schemes and asks whether evidence is being skewed in favour of conditional cash transfers, and the consequences of this on the continuing debate on the merits of unconditional and conditional cash transfers.
Bernd Schubert is remarkably sanguine about the problem of leapfrogging. The general assertion that “There is disappointment among those households that did not get in because of the 10 percent cut-off point and there is some envy. But there is no evidence of serious problems” is as far as we know contrary to the general experience of welfare schemes...
The Government of Zambia has been running a set of pilot cash transfers to test which could best form the basis of a national social protection system. The pilot being run in the Katete district transfers money to everyone over the age of 60 years, thus creating a form of social pension...