Achievements, Gaps and Prospects of The Productive Safety Net Program in Ethiopia: The Case of Lemo Woreda, Hadia Zone, Snnprs
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Date
2007-05
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Combinations of natural and man-made factors have resulted in a serious and growing food
insecurity problem in many parts of Eth iopia. About fifteen million people are lacing food
insecurity that is either chronic or transitolY in nature. The governments of Ethiopia and its
development partners have made concel1ed effort to avert the problem of food in security
and vulnerability. To this effect, a national food security strategy was developed in the year
2002, one component of which is the Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP). This program
has been designed and implemented to address the needs of chronically food insecure
households in a total of 267 targeted woredas from seven regional states of the countly.
Meanwhile, in order to ensure an effective implementation of the program, the government
put in place a guideline which clearly defines the rules to be applied in its way to achieve the
expected outcomes. Specifically. the implementation guideline stipulates, among others, the
institutional arrangements, targeting, payments, as well as monitoring and evaluation
system.
Even if the PSNP is still in the course of implementation and has brought about encouraging
results, there are some evidences that its implementation has also encountered problerlls.
Thus, assessing the achievements and gaps as well as indicating the prospects 01 ti le
PSNP is, more than any thing, a relevant and trmely agenda in Ethiopia.
Therefore, this thesis was conducted to assess the achievements, gaps and prospects of
the Ethiopian PSNP taking the case of Lema Woreda , which is one of the 267 Safety Net
Woredas in Ethiopia. The thesis argues that, no matter how a program is properly designed,
unless the rules are implemented to the level of expectations, it would be difficult to expect
the envisaged outcomes from tire program. The thesis tries to examine whether rule are
properly applied; i. e. institutions are right, targeting criteria are properly applied, payments
are appropriate and progresses are tracked properly vis-a-vis the program documents.
Besides, the thesis investigates the expected outcome of rescuing household asset
depletion and explores, if there are any, undesirabfe outcomes of the program. To come up
with the research findings, afresh cla ta Irom household level sUNey plus face-to-face
inteNiew with key informants as well as focus group discussions were supplemented with
secondary data obtained through consulting pertinent literatures. Analysis of sUNey results
shows that institutions are not performing well, targeting-related problems are obseNeci.
payments are inadequate and mechanism of monitoring and evaluation is practically
missing. The findings, however, also revealed that the PSNP, either directfy or indirectfy, has
been successful in terms of preventing the deple tion of the human, physical, social, natural
and human capitals of most of the targeted beneficiaries. Corroborating with other fin dings,
the study also uncovered that there are also undesirable outcomes like creating andlor
aggravating dependency attitude as well as weakening of informal institutions. Hence,
scaling-up or out of the specified achievements and redressing the gaps thereof is
tantamount to make the PSNP bear a fruit.
Tefera Molla: Addis Ababa Uni versity, RLDS-School of Graduate Studies Key: Words: Asset Depletion ; protection ; prevention Household stafynet safety net; and implementation
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Keywords
Asset Depletion, protection, prevention Household stafynet safety net, and implementation