> World Bank on Social Protection in Africa:
Can Safety Nets Close the Poverty Gap in Burkina Faso and Ensure Family Welfare? By Amina Semlali, Rebekka Grun von Jolk & Frieda Vandeninden
With focused and courageous policy decisions, Burkina Faso’s government can cover the country’s poor with an effective and efficient safety net. This end is achievable simply by realigning and better targeting existing expenditures. The reallocation of energy subsidies that mainly benefit the rich would further open fiscal space.
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social safety net is a set of programmes meant to catch you if you fall on hard times.
It is “poverty insurance”, and many countries have some form of non-contributory protection. If you fall below a certain poverty line, you should be eligible and get the benefits at no cost. These safety nets are usually a component of larger social protection systems that also include contributory social insurance, as well as labour market policies and programmes. Predictable cash transfers to poor households — often in exchange for school attendance or for family health checks — have become one of the most effective global poverty reduction strategies. Investments in these programmes — especially those that target vulnerable children — generate high returns. Each year, social safety net programmes in developing countries lift an estimated 69 million people out of absolute poverty, and assist some 97 million people in the bottom 20 percent. Life in a rapidly changing world is fraught with complex risks, making social safety nets more important than ever. They help to protect households exposed to shocks from disasters such as droughts, floods, epidemics and illnesses. They are interventions that, in principle, help poor households manage risk and invest in their livelihoods. Without them, poor people are often forced to adopt negative coping strategies that can lead to chronic poverty. Photo: A beneficiary from the World Bank’s Youth Employment & Skills Development Project and added on Mobile Childcare project.
A CENTRAL PART OF AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT In Africa, social safety nets have become a central part of development strategies and are being rapidly expanded. While there is substantial variation across countries, on average, governments in Africa spend about 1.3 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on social safety nets. That rate which is slightly lower than what transition economies spend (on average 1.5 percent). 82
Photo credits: Amina Semlali / World Bank.
Although these increasing levels of social safety nets expenditure are good news, the existing programmes fail to cover most of the people living in poverty. In fact, only 18 percent of the poorest quintile in Africa are covered. Research conducted on social safety nets in Burkina Faso (and presented in the recent CFI.co | Capital Finance International
book The Way Forward for Social Safety Nets in Burkina Faso) show a similar pattern. THE LAND OF HONEST PEOPLE Burkina Faso — the “Land of Honest People”, as the Republic of Upper Volta was named in 1984 by then-president Thomas Sankara — is a landlocked country in West Africa, surrounded