Implementing cash transfers - key
issues, successes and challenges:
perspectives from the ground
Dr Rachel Yates: Department for International Development
The dash for cash
Emerging global interest and nationally led
programmes of cash transfers as response to
AIDS pandemic particularly in hyper-endemics
Impetus from rising global food prices
Framework for Protection, care and Support of
OVC, Commission for Africa, Livingstone Call for
Action etc)
Adapting models from Latin America to low-
income and hyperendemic contexts
Cash transfers part of comprehensive social
protection approach within new DFID AIDS
strategy “Achieving Universal Impact”.
Evidence of impact
Michelle Adato and Lucy Bassett 2007 – A review
of the evidence of impacts and key policy debates
Significant impact on human capital outcomes
and MDGs
PROGRESA – CCT 9.3% improvement in girls
secondary enrolment
UCT Southern and Eastern Africa
Child support grant – South Africa - Nutrition
+3.5 cm on av if received during first year of life
and for at least 2/3 years
Poverty – Mozambique GAPVU cash transfer prog
–reduction in haeadcount poverty by 6%
Targeting
Move away from orphan exceptionalism
Defining VC
Vulnerability targeting with HIV and AIDS lens
Targeting elderly – impact on children in
hyperendemics
Capacity for proxy means testing
Community based approaches (Zambia, Kenya)
Exclusion errors (what barriers to access)
How to reach vulnerable children outside the
family environment (institutions and street
children)
Cash Plus
Cash necessary but not sufficient
Social protection as an approach not set of instruments
IATT working paper “Social protection for vulnerable
children in the context of AIDS”
Avoiding exclusion and promoting transformational
social protection- birth registration, child protection,
family support services (legal empowerment, ECD)
Alternative care – cash as part of reintegration package
Home based care – Uganda Community led HIV
initiative
Ensuring quality, accessibility of basic services – does
cash stimulate a supply response?
Scaling up
Political economy – Zambia drivers of change
Replicability in low income and fragile states
where state structures weak
Institutional arrangements – capacities of state
and non state actors
Capacity to manage CCT - PROGRESA
conditionality represented 18% of programme
costs
Capacity and role of social welfare ministries
(policy setting, monitoring, fund management?)
Sustainability – linkages with sector support, PRS
and National AIDS plans
Financing – new money or diverted from
elsewhere?
Links to Growth
Economists/Finance Ministries still need
convincing
Key role of World Bank analysis and
support
Social capital arguments strong
Benefit:costs - Investment in social
capital – (health, education, nutrition etc)
Affordability: ILO has shown that
providing cash transfers to poorest 10%
in most African countries 3% of GDP
What size transfer optimal/affordable?
Monitoring and evaluation
Good evidence at scale in Latin America
and South Africa
Studies of pilot cash progs in southern
and eastern Africa
Comparison of UCT and CCT e.g. Kenya.
Some studies empirically weak (lack of
control)
Need for longitudinal studies to measure
impact, particularly low income contexts
Today’s speakers
Perspectives from the ground
Douglas Webb, UNICEF: policy
implications and challenges in rolling out
Cash Transfers - experiences from Africa
Masuma Mamdani, JLICA: challenges and
issues : Experiences from Tanzania
Leah Berkowitz, CARE: community
perspectives, issues and challenges in
rolling out cash transfers,
Q &A
Closing remarks