Getaw Tadesse Research Fellow, IFPRI, AFR

1. Agriculture and Social Protection: The
Experience of Ethiopia’s Productive
Safety Net Program
Getaw Tadesse
Research Fellow, IFPRI, AFR
g.tadesse@cigar.org

2. Social protection in Ethiopia
• Long history of emergency support
• an adhoc program following recurrent droughts
• Mostly free food transfer with few food-for-work programs
• PSNP was designed in 2005
• More structured and long-term social protection program
• Considered as innovative
• Reviewed its design, implementation and impacts
• Answer why it is innovative
• Identify best practices and concerns /challenges

3. The Design of PSNP
• Designed to achieve the three P’s
• Protection from welfare crisis -----Consumption smoothing
• Prevention from asset crisis ………Income smoothing
• Promotion from poverty trap---------Asset building
• Interventions
• Direct Support (DS)
• Public Works (PW)
• Livelihood Development Packages (LDP): provision of financial,
knowledge and market supports to build asset

4. Implementation
LDP
• Credit =300,000 households ,
1.5 million clients
• Livelihood cash transfer =
8,389 households in 2015/16

5. How PSNP affects
agriculture & the economy?

6. Research findings on productive
impacts
Input use
LDP
Household
level
Productivity
Has no effect
on yields
Asset
building
Negative or no
impact unless
repeated for
several years
Positive impact
on assets
Village level
yield and GDP
Increased
use of inputs
and farm
investments
Increased
seeds and
fertilizers use
Negative,
unless with
repeated PW
SWC and
irrigation
projects
increased yield
increased GDP
by about 1
percent
PW

7. Research findings on disincentive
impacts
Disincentives Effects
Destabilizing Local Prices • Depends on local market and type of
transfers
Seasonal Labor Competition • Negative effects on soil erosion control
investment and crop yield
• But not strong /robust
Precautionary Saving and Private
Transfers
• No effect on dissaving and private
transfer
Inefficient use of freely provided
transfers/grants
• Not significant

8. Best practices
• Use of different
Instruments for
different household
typology

9. Best practices
• Program Continuity
• PSNP has run for about 15 years and provided regular cash transfers
• A repeated payment for up to five years has shown significant effect
both on food security and asset building
• Strong political commitment for continuity and implementation

10. Best practices-
• Evidence-Based Planning and Evolutionary
• Many evaluation researches, and on-going reviews to plan the next
phase
• HAB
• Nutrition sensitive transfers
• Livelihood cash transfers
• Agropastoral areas and cities
• Clear institutional architecture of implementation, monitoring and
evaluation

11. Concerns
• Low Pace of Graduation
• The rate of graduation is admittedly very low
• Slow impact on asset building
• Clientelism between local administrators and beneficiaries

12. Concerns
• Geographic Targeting
• Excludes CFI households in AGP woredas
• Excludes non-CFI households from either programs
• Creates incentives for non-CFI households for being poor to participate
to PSNP

13. Concerns
• Funding and Sustainability
• PSNP hugely depends on external donation and grants; and growing
over time
• Can it be affordable for the government to sustain?
• Though LDP has higher impact on asset building, much of the fund
goes to PWs
• the implementation of LDP is very slow.

14. Conclusion
• Many positive outcomes but strong concern on
• Graduation
• Sustainability
• Many empirical impact evaluations but gaps on
• Sustainability of the program and program outcomes
• Cost-effectiveness of the interventions