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
  • UNICEF Social Protection vacancies
    29 January 2010

    Three posts are currently being advertised by UNICEF:

    • Social Protection Specialist, ESARO (The Regional Office in Eastern and Southern Africa)
    • Social Policy Specialist, Ghana
    • Social Policy Specialist, Namibia
  • Planning for Prosperity?
    25 January 2010

    “It happens that you see it is better that the little ones eat and you can stay as you are, and there is nothing that you can do, and when the children ask why is it that mommy is not eating, you will say that you will eat after them..."

    Poverty appears to be too stubborn in South Africa to ever disappear. Too many people are living in absolute survivalist mode, spending their days searching for sufficient food and water to survive for the next day. What policies have we adopted to really bring an end to this, and are they appropriate?

  • New FREE distance learning module: CLIMATE CHANGE & DEVELOPMENT
    28 December 2009

    SOAS has launched new postgraduate distance learning module in Climate Change and Development that will be available to students and professionals from February 2010.

  • The Land of Less Contrast - How Brazil reined in inequality
    5 December 2009

    Suddenly, Brazil has become an unlikely benchmark in the global campaign to close the gap between rich and poor. Since 2003, some 21 million Brazilians have climbed out of poverty...

  • Namibia - Two Year Basic Income Grant Pilot ends
    4 December 2009

    After two years of successful implementation, the last payout will take place in December 2009. What now?
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Wahenga Comments
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  • Conditional v Unconditional: Why not just “Cash Transfers”?
    Anonymous
    3 February 2010

    'Anonymous' comments on the continuing debate around unconditional and conditional cash transfers, as highlighted by Sissy Teese and the World Bank.

  • The World Bank responds to Sissy Teese's 'Conspirational' claims
    Ariel Fiszbein
    Berk Özler
    Norbert Schady
    27 January 2010

    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.

  • The World Bank’s New Social Protection Model: Conspirational Cash Transfers
    Sissy Teese
    18 January 2010

    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.

  • Response to Bernd Shubert's leapfrogging comment from Evidence for Development
    John Seaman
    Celia Petty
    17 December 2009

    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...

  • A social pension in Zambia: Perceptions of the cash transfer pilot in Katete
    Charles Knox
    27 November 2009

    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...

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