Overview of the Transfer Project

Social protection and social cash transfers are increasingly being seen as a key tool in East and Southern Africa for combating the triple threat of chronic poverty, hunger and HIV and AIDS. Several programmes have developed in recent years across the region, such as the Productive Safety Nets Programme in Ethiopia; social pensions in South Africa, Namibia and Lesotho; cash transfers in Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique and Kenya; and more are planned. These programmes are united by common premises: that income poverty has highly damaging impacts on human development, and that cash empowers people living in poverty to make their own decisions on how to improve their lives.

Nevertheless, there are still a number of unanswered questions about how, why and in what contexts social transfer programmes are most appropriate and effective. Despite the growing number of social transfer programmes in Africa, there is a paucity of regional opportunities to share experience and learning. Too often, national policy makers, implementers and monitoring & evaluation specialists are struggling with similar challenges in isolation, and regional learning is left to be gleaned by external experts.

In response to these needs, Save the Children UK (SCUK) and UNICEF launched The Transfer Project. Phase 1 of the project, the ‘design phase’, ran from 2008 to 2009 and culminated in a project workshop in Nairobi in 2009 to share findings and plan the implementation phase. The implementation phase is now underway.

From its inception, this project has recognised the centrality of facilitating learning with a wide range of actors in order to achieve its goal of informing better design and implementation of social transfer programmes. All project partners are committed to the importance of this project as a public good and to the promotion of broad learning in the region, and beyond. In order meet this objective, the project plans to continue to engage with policy makers and processes at national, regional and international level on an ongoing basis – not only to share findings of the research, but also to ensure that stakeholders’ priority questions inform the formulation of research questions and that the research results flow back to inform design and implementation of social transfer programs.

Countries

Participation in the networking and learning component of the Transfer Project is open to all countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Currently the project is supporting existing or new data collection in five countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, and Rwanda. In addition, there are a growing number of countries participating in the network: Botswana, Ghana, Lesotho, South Africa, Swaziland, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Goal & Objectives

The Transfer Project will take place over a period of five years and will assess the impact of existing and planned government social transfer programmes on children and their families’ well-being, generating lessons across the region on key implementation and policy issues.

Goal

A stronger evidence base informs better design and implementation of social transfer programmes implemented by national governments in East and Southern Africa to reduce childhood poverty.

Objectives

To strengthen existing and generate new evidence on the effectiveness of social transfer programmes in achieving impacts for children in low income country settings.
To inform the development, design and implementation of national social transfer policy and programmes based on evidence, through engagement with governments, donors and civil society.
To promote learning across the continent on social transfers programme implementation, and research and evaluation.

Partners

Save the Children UK

Save the Children UK is an internationally recognised NGO that was founded in 1919 and currently operating in 40 countries worldwide, running long term programmes and emergency responses. It is one of the oldest and largest international organisations promoting child rights and the alleviation of poverty affecting children. Save the Children UK aims to work with the most vulnerable children across the world and to deliver immediate and lasting improvements in their lives.

Save the Children has been a leading NGO in the field of social protection since the early 2000s, combining analytical research with practical implementation and support for national systems. Through the work of the Childhood Poverty Research Centre (CHIP), Save the Children UK, was one of the first organisations to produce substantial analytical work on social protection and children. Largely working with governments, SCUK has substantial experience in the implementation of emergency cash programmes and supporting development of longer-term transfer programmes, including in Ethiopia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Kenya, Sri Lanka, and Swaziland. SCUK also supports/participates in a number of networks working on social protection including the Grow Up Free From Poverty Coalition, the African Civil Society Platform, and the IATT.

UNICEF

Created in 1946, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is mandated by the United Nations General Assembly to advocate for the protection of children's rights, to help meet their basic needs and to expand their opportunities to reach their full potential. UNICEF is guided by the Convention on the Rights of the Child and strives to establish children's rights as enduring ethical principles and international standards of behaviour towards children. UNICEF works in 190 countries through country programmes and National Committees.

UNICEF has been supporting the design, implementation and evaluation of social transfers in a number of countries in the region, including Kenya, Malawi, Lesotho, and Mozambique. In the region, UNICEF has supported/participated in a number of publications including: Public Works in the Context Of HIV/AIDS: Innovations In Public Works For Reaching The Most Vulnerable Children And Households In East And Southern Africa; Making Cash Count; and Social Protection in Eastern and Southern Africa: A Framework and Strategy for UNICEF. UNICEF has also published a report series: Social protection to tackle childhood poverty: lessons from West and Central Africa.

The Carolina Population Center at the University of Chapel Hill at North Carolina

Based at one of the leading universities in the US, the Carolina Population Center was established in 1966 and is a world-renowned research center working on path-breaking research in 85 countries and across the US. CPC’s research portfolio spans social science and health disciplines and is often collaborative and multidisciplinary. The faculty at CPC/UNC have a long-established tradition of collaborations with other research organizations in the US and internationally for research, training and capacity building. Presently, CPC faculty fellows are engaged in funded research on more than 50 projects.

The Carolina Population Center brings a demonstrated strength in evaluation research and research capacity development across the globe, a record of excellence in collecting, analyzing and disseminating complex longitudinal data in developing countries, access to a professional staff with proven skills in supporting international survey field work, and the ability to call upon experienced researchers from diverse disciplines to address the causes and consequences of child deprivation.

The Carolina Population Center was selected as the International Research Partner of The Transfer project through a competitive tender process.

Background

Save the Children UK and UNICEF experience indicates that social transfers could have a major impact in Africa. In 2008, UNICEF and Save the Children UK identified a potential stumbling block to expansion and effectiveness of social transfer programmes in Africa. Despite expanding programmes in sub-Saharan Africa, many decision-makers both from national governments and donor governments remained unconvinced that such programmes are a worthwhile investment. Many questions were also held by local civil society organisations and the general public, who influence these decision makers and have a stake in government decisions.

In addition, the pressure to further roll-out and scale up such programmes is over-taking the evidence base needed to inform such an expansion. Without better evidence there is a risk either of opportunities being missed to roll-out better-designed programmes or of a “chicken-and-egg” blockage with the lack of evidence being cited as a reason not to do the scaled-up programmes that would provide such evidence.

UNICEF and Save the Children therefore began to look at supporting Governments to invest heavily in quality monitoring and evaluation of social transfer programmes, as a way of resolving debates about the usefulness and appropriate design of cash transfers and of providing clear useful guidance to decision-makers.

From September 2008 – May 2009, Save the Children UK and UNICEF began a design phase for the Transfer Project. This phase was funded by UNICEF, SCUK and the UK Department for International Development (DFID). During this time, a research team, overseen by a reference board comprised of international experts, developed a high quality research design that ensures evidence relevant to decision-makers can be collected during Phase 2 (implementation phase) in a way that is robust and credible and is coordinated with existing monitoring and evaluation of the social transfer programmes.

Objectives for the design phase were:

To map existing programme design, data collection, and evidence gaps in the five countries, to inform the design of the subsequent evidence-generation project (“Research Phase”).
To develop an overarching methodological framework for the Research Phase which details the key indicators, data collection and analysis methods, accompanied by bespoke country-specific plans which take into account unique design issues.
To establish and strengthen key relationships at international and national level to facilitate data collection and analysis, and to ensure that evidence produced is relevant and credible to policy makers and stakeholders.
To develop a costed, detailed implementation plan for evidence collection, analysis and dissemination, and for translation of this evidence into policy-relevant information for civil society and policy makers.

In total, the research team spent 11 weeks visiting transfer programmes in five countries and consulting with some 277 stakeholders from government, donors and civil society. In addition to this, site visits were conducted in each country, where focus groups and semi-structured interviews with beneficiaries were held. During each country visit, the research team, consisting of the lead researcher and research advisor:

Developed a clear understanding of the country’s transfer programme(s), their management and operational structure;
Consulted with key stakeholders in country on the design of the framework, the development of indicators and methods for collecting and disseminating relevant data;
Documented details of the country’s transfer programme (including data collection systems); identified information gaps and key policy questions; and recommend potential options for filling those information gaps
Identified possible in-country partners and existing social protection fora

Five detailed country reports were produced and workshops with key stakeholders held to discuss the findings. Local research partners were also identified.

In addition to work at country level, the design phase:

Established an external reference group consisting of: Harold Alderman, World Bank; Michelle Adato, International Food Policy Research Institute; and Germano Mwabu, University of Nairobi.
Organised a final design workshop in Nairobi to finalise research framework and implementation plan. Participants included UNICEF and Save the Children UK country teams, government transfer programmes and relevant ministries, and external reference group.
Based on existing evidence, engaged with international stakeholders in order to identify key questions and map evidence gaps, and to begin the process of building broad buy-in and interest in the project’s research, policy engagement and learning objectives.
Developed an overall conceptual framework to guide the research (see below)