Assessing Administrative Capacity and Costs of Cash Transfer Schemes in Zambia ? Implications for Rollout
The Ministry of Community Development and Social Services (MCDSS) has taken the decision to rollout in 2009 a national social cash transfer scheme (SCTS) to cover the whole country by 2012. Thus far, social cash transfer schemes are being piloted in five districts in Southern and Eastern Provinces. The schemes are using structures created for the implementation of the Public Welfare Assistance System (PWAS) which rise from community level all the way to the national level. The adoption of pilot SCTS in Zambia follows the growing acceptance of social cash transfers as a means for assisting extremely poor households. Partly, this is due to the positive impact of conditional cash transfers in Latin America with respect to school enrolments, improved health and reduction in poverty levels for participating households. An evaluation of the Kalomo SCTS revealed a number of achievements with respect to impact on the beneficiaries including a rise in self-esteem and confidence among beneficiaries, reduced incidence of begging, increased food consumption, increased asset ownership and positive impacts for the local economy. Field work for this assessment although not focused on assessing impacts noted qualitative evidence of these findings. Implementation of pilot schemes started in 2004 with the Kalomo SCTS followed by one in 2005 in Kazungula, 2006 in Chipata and in 2007 in Monze and Katete. The schemes have been implemented with some variation so that they ?generate information on the feasibility, costs and benefits and negative impacts of a Social Cash Transfer Scheme?? (Zulu and Schuring, May 2007, p.1). Each of the pilot scheme has been designed to form a part of the learning agenda that would utilise lessons towards the design of a national social cash transfer. It is also being assessed as to the extent to which the PWAS structures are able to accommodate social cash transfer along existing social welfare activities.
Co-Producing Ineffective States: Social Knowledge, Social Policy and Social Citizenship in Africa and in Development
This paper explores the links between social knowledge, social policy and state forms in Sub-Saharan Africa. Its central argument is that the capacities of states to establish inclusive welfare regimes (Gough et al 2004) for citizens are limited by the ways in which states themselves are organised, including the constitution of state society relations (see also Neocosmos 2003). Moreover, the capacity constraints of African states in relation to citizen welfare are accentuated rather than mitigated by the range of policy interventions promoted by development actors. Academic and policy knowledge about states and society in Africa, as elsewhere, provides the rationale for certain kinds of interventions which have implications for the organisation of states and regimes of citizenship (Skopkol & Rueschemeyer 1996; Stavrakis 2002). Consequently, the new generation of social protection programmes currently being implemented in countries such as Ghana, Ethiopia and Tanzania are not only inadequate in the context of the increasing mobility of capital and labour, accelerated by regionalisation policies and the privatization of land; they perpetuate what Mahmood Mamdani has characterised as the 'bifurcated state' (1996) based on a dual system of social entitlements.
Social security for the excluded majority : case studies of developing countries
This volume examines the problem of exclusion from social security for the majority of workers in developing countries, and explores ways in which governments and organizations at national and local levels can work together to create social security policies that protect everyone. A series of case studies looks closely at the workings of self-financed schemes for informal workers, and from these the best are highlighted. The authors then evaluate various approaches to the extension of formal sector social insurance to informal sector workers, including the self-employed, and also explore how social assistance programmes, although often needing sophisticated administration, can help ensure that benefits reach the population most in need.