1.
SOCIAL PROTECTION
IN RURAL AREAS
Boosting growth to end hunger by 2025
The role of social protection
Social Protection: From Protection to Production
Natalia Winder Rossi
FAO Social Protection Team Leader – Senior Adviser
Washington, DC | 2 May, 2019

2.
What is the issue?
Social Protection: From Protection to Production
1
Progress, but still a long way to go….
 736 million people live in extreme poverty
 Increase in the number of extreme poor in Sub Saharan
Africa from 1990 (413 million) to 2015 (413 million)
 Most of the extreme poor are in rural areas:
 income depend on agriculture and natural resources
 Vulnerable to climate related risks and shocks
 Limited access to social services, infrastructure, financial
services
 Heterogeneous group (income, geographic location,
livelihood, age, gender)

3.
What is the issue?
Social Protection: From Protection to Production
1
How to accelerate progress to achieve SDG 1 (1.1; 1.3; 1.5)?
 Political will as a pre-condition
 Macro dynamics- stimulation of economic growth and
generating employment where majority of poor live
 Enhancing social and productive capital (investing in rural
areas, access to services, including in extending social
protection to the poor)*

4.
Social Protection: From Protection to Production
3Boosting growth to end hunger by 2025
The role of social protection
WHAT IS THE ISSUE?
Pathways to enhance social and productive inclusion
 Make processes of
structural, rural and
agricultural transformation
more inclusive
 Address inequitable
distribution of resources
and market failures
 Create employment and
economic opportunities
 Increase access to assets (including
land, natural resources, technology)
 Accumulate human capital
 Increase access to liquidity,
credit, markets and services
 Improve ability to manage risk
 Reduce burden of care

5.
What is the role of social protection in this context?
Social Protection: From Protection to Production
1
 Research carried out by Transfer Project (FAO, UNICEF, UNC and
partners) focused exclusively in Africa, shows that:
 Social protection can have social and productive impacts among the
poorest; and
 Can generate multiplier impacts in the local economy
 How to sustain these impacts in the long-run?
 Coordinated and coherent agricultural and social protection policies and
programs can help break the intergenerational transmission of extreme
poverty
 Importance of this specific intersectoral coordination reflected in several African
policy initiatives and declarations (e.g.: CAADP, Malabo)

6.
Enhancing productive capital: what do we know?
Social Protection: From Protection to Production
1
 Impact: National cash transfer programmes:
 Improvement of food security across the board
 Strong effects on school enrolment
 Mixed results in health
 Enhance risk management capacity, relax liquidity
constraints, and generate economic impacts even among
the poorest
 Generate multiplier impacts in the local economy
(impacts on non-participants)
Transfer Project contributed to build and
strengthen the economic case for scale-up or
programmes at national level!

7.
STRONG IMPACT ON PRODUCTIVE ACTIVITIES, WITH
VARIATION ACROSS COUNTRIES
Crop Livestock NFE
Productive
labor
Social
Networks
Risk
management
Zambia     
Malawi   X   
Zimbabwe    X X 
Lesotho   X X  
Kenya X  X 
Ethiopia  X X X 
Ghana X X X   
Reduction in casual ag labor and increase in household economic
activities—no general work disincentive, elasticity of leisure is low
Synergies between cash and productive plus
Social Protection: From Protection to Production

8.
Enhancing productive capital: what do we know?
Social Protection: From Protection to Production
1
 Adequacy of programmes:
 Take up, use and impact of programmes will largely depend on the
adequacy of such programmes in terms of size, regularity, but also socio-
cultural pertinence and livelihoods
 TP contributed to shed light on the specific elements of design that
matter for economic impacts
 TP raising issues on gender-sensitive design, implementation
 Still gaps in terms of pertinence for indigenous peoples, livelihoods*

9.
Enhancing productive capital: Coherence
Social Protection: From Protection to Production
1
How to maximize impacts: Coherence with agriculture interventions
“A systematic promotion of complementary and consistent policies and
programs across sectors, thereby creating synergies to combat rural poverty
and food insecurity more effectively”
 To maximize and sustain the gains over time, it is key to complement cash with
complementary interventions (existing or new)
 “To avoid/minimize conflicting interactions between policies/programs
 To be pursued horizontally (across ministries/agencies) or vertically (across different
levels of government)
 Different desired outcomes will determine the type of “coherence

10.
Enhancing productive capital: what do we know?
Social Protection: From Protection to Production
1
 Typologies of existing of coherent interventions (lit review):
• Sustainable Livelihood Programs (SLP): single programs with multiple components
including both agricultural and social protection interventions;
• Complementary Programs (CP): programs from the two sectors that are designed
and/or implemented in a somewhat coordinated and/or aligned manner;
• Overlapping programmes (OP): programs from both sectors without alignment or
coordination which beneficiaries can partially overlap at the individual/household
and/or at geographical/community level only in an unplanned manner

11.
Enhancing productive capital: Coherence
Social Protection: From Protection to Production
1
 Coherence with agriculture interventions (Example:
Cash+ in FSN and agriculture)
Social assistance interventions providing regular transfers
in combination with additional components or linkages
that seek to augment income/economic effects
• The “plus” components can be integrated into the cash transfer program
or can be externally linked
• Cash component allows beneficiaries: 1) to address their immediate
basic needs and 2) to invest in economic activities
• The “plus” components (productive assistance and training) protect,
restore, and develop livelihoods.
• Cash+ as part of a broader long-term vision of economic inclusion
strategies

12.
Enhancing productive capital: what do we know?
Social Protection: From Protection to Production
1
 What does the evidence say?
• Mostly positive results on various domains (investment in productive assets,
financial inclusion, food security)
• Long-term implications not clear (sustainability)
• Reaching the poorest still challenging
• In addition to:
• Limited Institutional arrangements to facilitate coordination across different government
agencies
• A conscious effort needed to to select the beneficiaries of both types of interventions in a way
to increase the joint impact of both programs
• Goal of raising agricultural productivity vs. the goal of mitigating or reducing rural poverty

13.
Enhancing productive capital: End goal…
Social Protection: From Protection to Production
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 Comprehensive strategy of economic participation and inclusion of the poorest
 Gradual integration of households into broader rural and economic
development processes
 Identify processes to enhance inclusion of those left behind
 Graduation models provide some elements, but gaps in terms of
sustainability and linkages with broader processes
 CASH+ and SP/AG coherence work provided some additional elements on
sustainability on long-term impact, but still gaps on incentives to AG, labor,
production sectors to systematically engage

14.
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www.fao.org/social-protection
Boosting growth to end hunger by 2025
The role of social protection
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