What Works for Africa's Poorest by David Lawson

Author:David Lawson [Lawson, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781853398438
Goodreads: 32902541
Publisher: Practical Action Publishing
Published: 2017-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

About the author

Munshi Sulaiman is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Economic Growth Center, Yale University.

http://dx.doi.org/10.3362/9781780448435.008

CHAPTER 9

The role of public works in addressing poverty: Lessons from recent developments in public works programming

Anna McCord

This chapter explores recent innovations in public works (PW) programming in sub-Saharan Africa to address the challenge of social protection provision in contexts of chronic mass under- and unemployment. Three ongoing national programmes introduced in the mid-2000s are explored: the Ethiopian Productive Safety Nets Programme, the Rwandan Vision 2020 Umurenge Programme, and the South African Expanded Public Works Programme (PWP). These have introduced a variety of innovations relating to the scale and duration of employment provided, the sectors in which employment is provided, the creation of performance incentives, and coordination with complementary interventions. While they aim to provide social protection which enables participants to graduate out of poverty, they are designed in recognition of the fact that mass graduation is unlikely in the short term given the structural determinants of poverty and under- and unemployment. The programmes still face challenges in providing effective social protection for the working-age poor, but nonetheless they offer valuable options for future programming and differ significantly from the conventional PWP approach adopted in the region.

Keywords: public works, social protection, graduation, productive safety nets, unemployment

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