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Next week the UN celebrates World Food Day which this year focuses on social protection and agriculture in order to break the cycle of poverty. Gearing up to this event, Pamela Pozarny, a rural sociologist in the FAO Investment Centre's Africa Service, spoke of her involvement in FAO's From Protection to Production (PtoP) programme and the importance of linking cash transfer (CT) programmes with broader agricultural and rural development interventions.   

What is PtoP?

PtoP is an FAO programme that provides evidence and analysis of the economic and social impacts of CT programmes in sub-Saharan Africa, using this evidence to provide advice to Governments on policy and programme design. It forms part of the larger Transfer Project with other key partners, which supports governments in the design, implementation and impact evaluation of CT programmes. In these programmes, participating governments provide cash to households identified as the most vulnerable and/or poorest of the poor. Cash transfers are becoming an increasingly important instrument, particularly in Africa, for reducing poverty and supporting rural livelihoods.

The PtoP began with funding from DFID and is now a major pillar of FAO's social protection agenda and Strategic Objective 3; the FAO programme works with UNICEF, governments and other development partners. So far, the PtoP team has been involved with impact evaluations in nine countries in sub-Saharan Africa, filling important knowledge gaps concerning the impact of CTs, their potential to promote economic investments and to improve livelihoods overall. The research also helps to strengthen linkages between agriculture and social protection. This has spurred a new area of policy dialogue and support where FAO is playing a critical role with partners at global, regional and country levels; activities include facilitating cross-country sharing and developing policy tools to assist policy-makers and practitioners to strengthen this coherence.

What is your role as a rural sociologist?

I have been leading the design and implementation of the qualitative research component of these evaluations, looking at impacts around rural investment, food security, nutrition, household resilience, gender and livelihoods. PtoP uses a mixed methods approach, combining quantitative and qualitative research and the local economy-wide impact evaluation (LEWIE) methodologies, a simulated analysis of multiplier effects on the local economy and other spillovers generated by CTs (i.e. what are the benefits for every dollar put into a community?). This comprehensive approach deepens the understanding of how CTs affect household and community behaviours, perspectives and attitudes.

For the qualitative analysis, I form a team and work in guiding a lead international consultant and national team of researchers. Our rigorous and systematic methodology is packaged in a “field guide” and comprises focus group discussions with beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries, key informant interviews, in-depth household case studies and interviews with people from non-participating communities. We spend a lot of time with beneficiaries, discussing experiences and impacts CTs have had on their lives, benefits and improvements, their hopes, fears, challenges. We examine how and by whom decisions around CTs are made within the household, whether they are used for employment, agricultural activities, schooling or consumption needs and how these priorities are “bargained” and balanced among household needs. We also look at community impacts and the operational side, for example how local committees facilitating implementation interact with and support households and the community. We also focus on payment systems, the impacts of timeliness (or unpredictability) of payments and the messages accompanying those payments.

In our final country reports we try to incorporate findings of the wider PtoP analyses in that country to provide a comprehensive country impact evaluation. As interesting as it is to connect the dots, however, we're not doing this for research's sake. The most important point of our work is to share this evidence with governments and partners to provide them with recommendations and ideas for strengthening their programmes and policies. Overall, governments and partners have shown keen genuine interest in our findings, with many expressing the intention of following up.

What are some of the recommendations?

We give pragmatic and doable recommendations. We are aware that social protection is not always the highest priority on the agenda in Ministries of Finance, and all sectors are vying for limited resources. One important recommendation emerging consistently in our work is that although CT programmes have shown success in improving food security and in reducing poverty, they can't achieve their objectives in isolation. There need to be linkages, coordination and coherence between CT programmes and other interventions and investments, particularly around agriculture, to enable households to reach a threshold where they are adequately resilient, able to manage shocks and maintain a level of livelihood and food and nutrition security that is sustainable. 

In Malawi, for example, we recommended that Government strengthen coherence between social protection and rural development programmes, highlighting the potential benefits from operationalizing more direct links between CT beneficiaries and the village savings and loan (VSL) programme. It's a win-win situation. It promotes household savings, investment and potential development of income-generating groups, including producer groups. This VSL-CT link combined with skills training, start-up packages, agricultural extension programmes has great potential to improve small businesses, notably for youth (e.g. to diversify, modernize, form groups, improve marketing strategies). When we presented our findings, interest and buy-in from Government and development partners impressed us.

As another example, limited employment opportunities in rural Africa, especially for youth, is a big challenge. Malawi and other countries such as Zambia, have a number of free scholarships to vocational colleges available at district level for qualifying youth. We recommended that Government allocate a small proportion of the scholarships for eligible youth in CT beneficiary families. This way once they “grow out” of the CT programme they have skills to earn a living.  We learned from our interviews with parents and youth that many youth from beneficiary households pass the exams, but lack the resources to enter college and are not chosen for scholarships. The Government really liked this idea and said they were aiming to follow up on it.

Is there a risk of creating a culture of dependency?

Many programmes have the objective of eventually graduating beneficiaries from the CT programme; however, there is awareness that within some programmes, particularly those targeting labour-constrained households, the elderly and the disabled, some people may never graduate.

We're already finding strong indications in our research that CTs as well as other social protection programmes are not creating dependency among beneficiary households, but rather stimulating productive investments and economic growth, (read more here).

Once rural households smooth consumption, meet their basic needs and invest in education, they go on to invest in agriculture and income-generating ventures, including small businesses. With the cash, people are working more on their own farms. We've also found that resilience is improving, the hungry months are being reduced and dietary diversity is being improved over more months of the year. So CTs are not only relieving the symptoms of poverty and hunger but also empowering beneficiaries to build a path out of poverty and hunger.  

People are using CTs to improve their economic base, which enables them to better manage risks. Risks of course are inevitable in much of Africa, whether drought, heavy rains or political instability – all of which affect harvests. In nearly all countries where we've worked, CTs have enabled beneficiaries to re-enter or enter for the first time into social networks. These networks are invaluable for risk sharing and support mechanisms; they also promote information exchange and can foster income generation.

Notwithstanding its effectiveness, there is increasing recognition that social protection alone cannot sustainably move people out of hunger, malnutrition and poverty. That's why it's important to coordinate these programmes with rural interventions. People typically focus first on basic needs (e.g. food security, health) and improving their livelihoods with CTs. Linking these with other forms of support will enable them to meet these needs while sustaining and improving their agricultural production and income-generating activities for the long term.