ITP 322 Social trygghet

The partners report progress within each of the outcome areas as well as change resulting from the change programmes in respective country. Change programmes in countries belonging to the first batch of countries (Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia) have generally progressed further than those of the second batch (Cambodia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Sudan, and Zimbabwe), having had one cohort less to work on the change programmes. In Kenya, the change programme aims to integrate social protection and livelihood initiatives to build the resilience of families facing increasing shocks and stresses in rural Kenya. Important steps have been taken to secure long-term commitments from the Government of Kenya and to institutionalise the programme within the countys social protection architecture. The change programme was embedded as a flagship programme of the Fourth Medium Term Plan (MTPIV) of Kenyas Vision 2030 and the annual work plan of the Directorate of Social Development. Following meetings with development partners, the team mobilized additional resources for implementation. Among them, Give Directly committed to partnering with the ITP team to support implementation in Vihiga County, providing funding for the asset transfer component of the programme. In Uganda, the change programme has three components: 1) expanding the national social pension programme, (2) institutionalising a youth development pilot for adolescent girls (Girls Empowering Girls), (3) extending social protection measures for informal sector workers. Advocacy work under the programme contributed to ensuring government budget allocation to finance the Senior Citizens Grant (SCG), increasing the value of the grant by 20% to restore its purchasing power. The team also secured a parliamentary endorsement for a proposal to lower the eligibility age for SCG from 80 to 75 years, implying an increase in coverage by 66%. In relation to the second component, the work on Girls Empowering Girls reinforced the Kampala Capital City Authoritys support for the initiative and succeeded in attracting EUR 4.2 million in scaleup support from the Embassy of Belgium, thus expanding the programme's coverage to an additional 39 districts in four year. The team also supported the enrolment of an additional 1,500 girls into the programme. Zambias change programme aims to reduce poverty and vulnerability by delivering seamless social protection services through single window (SW) systems. Through the ITP change programme, the government, in cooperation with development partners (e.g., UNICEF, ILO and WFP), has been able to roll out the SW approach to nearly half of all districts nationwide. The ITP 5 team secured funding and expanded the SW approach to six more districts while ITP 5 and 7 teams organised field trips to SW districts for familiarisation, study, evaluation and learning purposes and compiled case studies for further fundraising. In Tanzania, the ITP team developed an indicator to track the nutrition messages for poor households with children under five under the Productive Social Safety Net (PSSN). The indicator was included in the nutrition plan implementation tracking system overseen by the President's Office of Regional Administration and Local Government Authority. The partners report that this is a significant development as data on poor households reached with nutrition information is now available and can be used to guide social protection and nutrition interventions. In addition, the team developed a policy brief on the link between social protection and nutrition as well as eight nutrition messages to offer nutrition education to poor households under the PSSN. Part of the change programme in Zimbabwe is about enhancing the countrys social protection system by improving the Management Information System (MIS). ITP 4 members were appointed to the Technical Committee on the development of the integrated MIS and the National Social Protection Steering Committee a key step as it allows the ITP team to directly influence and shape the development of the MIS system. The change programme in Ethiopia aims to integrate multisectoral nutrition interventions into the nations flagship social protection programme the Productive Safety Net Programme. In response to several conflicts and crises in the country, the work has been geared towards addressing links between nutrition sensitive social protection and nation building, including advocacy efforts to elevate the priority for social protection investments as a strategy for building a process for shared social development and prosperity in Ethiopia. As a result, the ITP team, Steering Committee and ITP regional mentors collaborated with the Ministry of Women and Social Affairs (MoWSA) and key development partners like Sida, UNICEF and WFP to organise a highlevel national conference with the theme Social Protection for Nation building in Ethiopia in May 2023. The conference was co-sponsored by UNICEF and organized by the ITP team. Rwanda's change programme aims to design, resource, and establish a well-coordinated and functional Integrated Case Worker Management System (ICWMS) that accelerates human capital development in Rwanda. As part of the work, the ITP team has led consultations at all levels and sensitized communities and case workers on Integrated Case Worker Management (ICWM) by developing training modules elaborating on the monitoring of households for graduation. Sensitisation campaigns were prepared for radio and TV focused on the role of community and parasocial workers as a way to disseminate the graduation strategy. The ITP has also contributed to strengthening an Aricawide Community of Practice (CoP) in social protection, with ITP participants from multiple countries joining the CoP meeting in Livingstone, Zambia in December 2022 chaired by a member of the Zambia ITP team. The process followed the Uganda ITP participants work in 2022 organising and launching a national chapter of the Community of Practice and an ensuring webinar series in 2023 for senior government officials. According to reporting, the Uganda team will host the next Africawide CoP in late 2023, including participants from a range of ITP countries.

The objective of the ITP is to contribute to improved social protection systems to better tackle poverty, vulnerability, inequality (both gender and economic) and social exclusion and to contribute to inclusive social development and equitable economic growth. The programme is being implemented during 2019-2024 in ten countries in Africa and Asia (Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Rwanda, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Sudan, and Cambodia). Intended outcome areas: 1) Strengthening government capacity 2) Improving social protection systems/outcomes 3) Building development synergies 4) Rightsbased approaches to improve gender equality 5) Strengthening organisational integrity Central to the ITP are the change programs that each country team develop and implement throughout the implementation period. The change programs are inherited between cohorts of participants in each country, allowing for more long term approaches and focus on sustainability