Kapacitetsbyggande sociala trygghetssystem 2019-2024

The programme has largely performed well during the past year, below some examples of results in summary: Focus Area 1: Improved regularity of the Social Cash Transfers (SCT) The Social Cash Transfer (SCT) programme expanded in 2023 with sustained regular releases of budgeted funds from the Government of the Republic of Zambia, the World Bank, and donors. The number of households benefiting from SCT increased from 1,027,000 to 1,311,101 households from all 116 districts across the country. The value of SCT transfers normalised at ZMW150 (Zambian Kwacha) to ZMW200 for households without a person with disability and from ZMW300 to ZMW400 for households with a person with a disability. There is also ongoing advocacy to make the transfer value more adequate, given the increasing cost of living in Zambia, compounded by recurring shocks. Focus Area 2: Nutrition and gender sensitive SCT The joint programme is supporting the development of a clearly articulated Cash Plus Strategy as guidance for bringing the agenda to deliver the expected results. One of the priority overlays for the SCT is integration with relevant nutrition and gender interventions. 2023 was a pivotal year in supporting the MCDSS in the gender and nutrition sensitive 1000 Days in Social Cash Transfer pilot initiative. The pilot was launched with high level representation from the Government and cooperating partners and implementation momentum took off, reaching poor and vulnerable households within the 1,000 most critical days across all four pilot districts. A total of 12,904 households, comprising 781 from the main SCT programme and 12,123 households identified from non SCT households, received two bimonthly transfers within the reporting period. The pilot implementation was facilitated by strong community sensitisation and capacity building of community, district, provincial and national level staff, as well as volunteers on the programme. This was accompanied by social and behaviour change communications in all four districts to influence positive behavioral change at community, household, and individual level, incorporating key messages focused on empowerment of beneficiaries on decision making and redress seeking, increased awareness of good nutrition practices and the linkage between cash and nutrition among beneficiaries. The case management component of the pilot also rolled out in 2023, first with training of community case managers and implementation of the actual case management, reaching 2,818 beneficiaries in 2023. Focus Area 3: Improved disability mainstreaming The efforts to mainstream disability inclusion and ensure inclusion of persons with disabilities in social protection were strengthened further in 2023. A total of 19,757 persons with disabilities were issued with disability cards to protect their continued enrolment and ensure their continued access to the SCT programme. The Disability Management Information System (DMIS) is live in all 10 provinces and has been supported with an offline registration tool. Further, persons with disabilities and disabilityfocused organisations participated in the national planning, budgeting, and monitoring process. In spite of the progress in this area, a lot of work remains to be done to continuously register people as the target is far from being reached. Focus Area 4: Improved performance of the Poverty and Vulnerability Reduction Cluster As part of enhancing the delivery of the social protection programme, the United Nations continued to support the Single Window Initiative (SWI) through the leadership of the MCDSS. The SWI is being implemented in 47 districts. As per its objective to enhance access to social protection and other services, the programme continued to support stakeholder engagements at district level and community sensitisation at the local levels, focusing on social protection programmes and where they can be accessed. To date the SWI has transferred 58 000 households to Social Protection programmes in 17 districts. The National Policy on Disability also advanced, as well as the revision of the National Policy for Social Protection. Focus Area 5: Improved Service Delivery and Interaction with Beneficiaries and Communities To continue strengthening citizen engagement and community participation in policy and programme processes, various social accountability tools were developed to strengthen beneficiary voice and community participation. Some of these tools include the Social Protection Budget Tracking and Service Delivery Tools and the Community Balanced Scorecard. The 2024 social sector budget briefs were also developed for Social Protection, Education, Health, Nutrition, Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH), Child Protection and, for the first time, Disability. These serve as not only informative documents on budget allocations but as powerful advocacy tools to improve spending within the social sector. In addition to results under each focus area the programme has advanced advocacy in Social Protection and faclilitated adoption of five areas/messages for advocacy for collective benefit of the sector. The programme has also contributed greatly to visibility through high level events and wise outreach in both traditional and social media. A total of 12 briefs, studies and assessment have been produced and distributed widely contributing to the collective knowledge on Social Protection in Zambia.

The Joint UN Programme on Social Protection phase II has the following expected results: Impact: Reduced Multi-dimentional poverty Outcomes:  1. Predictable and regular Social Cash Transfers 2. Operational Cash linkages 3. Improved nutrition 4. Disability mainstreaming 5. Improved cluster perfomace In addition the programme has a component of Emergency Cash Transfers with payments during 2019 and 2020 to social cash beneficiaries in the districts hardest hit by the prolonged reduced rainfall.In 2020 another round of Emergency Cash Transfers has been added to mitigate the situation related to Covid-19. Sida plan to contribute financially to the covid-19 ECT through an amendment to the programme agreement.