Targeting in development Projects: Approaches, challenges, and lessons learned

These set of slides were presented at the BEP Seminar "Targeting in Development Projects: Approaches, challenges, and lessons learned" held last Oct. 2, 2023 in Cairo, Egyp

Poverty and the role of social protection systems in Africa during the COVID-19 pandemic

Key messages The pandemic increased poverty in Africa by less than expected, approximately 1.5-1.7 percentage points in 2020. Countries affected by Fragility, Conflict, and Violence (FCV) experienced the greatest increases in poverty. An emerging literature establishes that social protection programs in Africa during the pandemic had positive impacts and was generally pro-poor, suggesting a key cushion-ing role played by the expansion of social protection on trends in poverty. However, delivering shock-responsive social protection in Africa continues to face im-portant challenges related to targeting, coverage, timeliness, and financing. Early targeting analyses for some countries during the pandemic show that targeting was broadly progressive in some countries and regressive in some other countries

Revisiting poverty trends and the role of social protection systems in Africa during the COVID-19 pandemic

Quantifying the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on poverty in Africa has been as difficult as predicting the path of the pandemic, mainly due to data limitations. The advent of new data sources, including national accounts and phone survey data, provides an opportunity for a thorough reassessment of the impact of the pandemic and the subsequent expansion of social protection systems on the evolution of poverty in Africa. In this paper, we combine per capita GDP growth from national accounts with data from High-Frequency Phone Surveys for several countries to estimate the net impact of the pandemic on poverty. We find that the pandemic has increased poverty in Africa by 1.5-1.7 percentage points in 2020, relatively smaller than early estimates and projections. We also find that countries affected by Fragility, Conflict, and Violence (FCV) experienced the greatest increases in poverty, about 2.1 percentage points in 2020. Furthermore, we assess and synthesize empirical evidence on the role that social protection systems played in mitigating the adverse impact of the COVID-19 crisis in Africa. We review social protection responses in various African countries, mainly focusing on the impact of these programs and effectiveness of targeting systems. Although the evidence base on the protective role of social protection programs during the pandemic remains scarce, we highlight important findings on the impacts of these programs while also uncovering some vulnerabilities in social protection programming in Africa. We finally draw important lessons related to the delivery, targeting and impact of various social protection programs launched in Africa in response to the pandemic

WP1: Innovations in partnerships, policies and platforms for the efficient, inclusive and climate resilient transformation of agrifood systems

From Fragility to Resilience in Central and West Asia and North Africa (F2R-CWANA) WP1: Innovations in partnerships, policies and platforms for the efficient, inclusive and climate resilient transformation of agrifood systems Inception Workshop – Morocco May 17, 202

Impact evaluation report: Egypt’s forsa graduation program

Forsa, which means “Opportunity” in Arabic, is a new economic inclusion program of the government of the Arab Republic of Egypt. Implemented by the Ministry of Social Solidarity, the program aims to graduate beneficiaries of the national cash transfer program, the Takaful & Karama Program (TKP), to economic self-reliance by enabling them to engage in wage employment or sustainable economic enterprises. The 2021 World Bank Economic Inclusion report (Andrews et al. 2021) highlights a recent increase globally in such graduation or economic inclusion programs, which now reaches around 92 million beneficiaries from 20 million households across more than 75 countries. This rapid growth has necessitated an increasing demand for evidence on best practices in graduation program implementation. The newly designed Forsa program is based on the graduation approach, but with innovations drawing from theories of behavioral economics as well as creating a network of active youth volunteers for economic empowerment to reduce costs compared to the standard BRAC-inspired model. Forsa also expands the graduation model to include the option of wage-employment, rather than only focusing on self-employment. Evidence on the impact of job training programs linked to wage employment on both job retention and future earnings is mixed (McKenzie 2017), although most such programs do not include cash assistance. This impact evaluation of the Forsa program in Egypt is intended to contribute to the global evidence on effective graduation program design as well as provide immediate policy-relevant guidance for the Ministry of Social Solidarity. The impact evaluation will measure the degree to which Forsa is successful at increasing household consumption and will investigate which participant groups and program features demonstrate the greatest improvements in household welfare and economic activity

Egypt’s Takaful Cash Transfer Program: Impacts and recommendations from the second round evaluation

Egypt’s national cash transfer program, Takaful, and its sister program Karama covered 17 million poor beneficiaries as of 2022, about 16 percent of the Egyptian population. Takaful was designed in 2015 as a conditional cash transfer program providing income support targeted to the most vulnerable, namely poor families with children under age 18. As one of the largest programs — both in absolute terms and in terms of share of the population covered — in the wave of national cash transfer programs spreading across Africa, as well as an innovator among countries in the Middle East, Egypt’s experience has the potential to serve as a model for these regions. The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), in collaboration with the Ministry of Social Solidarity, conducted a first-round evaluation of the program in 2017 to estimate its effects on household well-being (Breisinger et al. 2018). That evaluation found large positive impacts on several outcomes, most notably, household consumption. The second-round evaluation, conducted in 2022, found a shift toward greater investment in physical and human capital among program beneficiaries. This brief summarizes the main findings from that second-round evaluation, noting differences from the first evaluation results and providing key recommendations

The Russia-Ukraine crisis: Implications for global and regional food security and potential policy responses

This paper analyzes the implications of the Russian-Ukraine crisis on global and regional food security. We start with a global vulnerability analysis to identify most vulnerable regions and countries. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is particularly vulnerable to trade shocks because of its high food import dependence. Thus, we provide descriptive evidence characterizing how food systems and policies impact vulnerability to the price shock in selected MENA countries: Egypt, Sudan, and Yemen. Within these countries, we show that the crisis will differentially impact poor and non-poor households as well as rural and urban households. Although the absolute level of food insecurity may still be higher in rural areas where larger numbers of poor households are located, urban poor are likely to suffer most because of the Russia-Ukraine crisis and associated hikes in food prices, especially in those countries where social protection and food subsidies are missing. On the policy side, we review lessons from previous food crises and identify actions needed to take (and to avoid) to protect most vulnerable countries and households in the short-term while also highlighting long-term policy options to diversify food, fertilizer and energy production and trade