Exiting Poverty in Rwanda (Social Protection)

EPR is a complex program working on multiple levels to achieve both immediate impacts on poor households through increased access to social protection, as well as strengthening the national system for social proteciton through capacity building and supporting policy development in the sector. The program has delivered important results on both levels: - EPR financial aid contributed to social protection cash transfers being expanded and reaching 508.629 poor households in the Rwandan fiscal year 22/23. This includes support to highly vulnerable groups such as people with limited or no labour capabilities, poor pregnant and lactating women, and children in poverty at risk of undernutrition and stunting. The Sida co-funding has been instrumental in the expanded coverage as a significant portion of the Sida funding goes directly to support the government´s transfers. - The Government of Rwanda launched new and ambitious social protection policy innovations, including new strategies and implementation plans for: a) categorical (lifecycle) social protection grants, b) shock responsive cash transfers and a c) national poverty graduation strategy. Significant shifts in the new social protection steering documents include i) the targeting of individuals rather than households, ii) foundations for the transition to rights-based individual entitlements, and iii) categorical targeting approaches. The EPR Technical Assistance support has been instrumental in the above achievements. -The design document and guidelines for the shock responsive cash transfer (SRCT) instruments were approved. The design process was led by LODA, with support from the EPR TAF, and has looked to embed horizontal coordination with national disaster risk reduction stakeholders such as MINEMA. - A revised National Strategy for Graduation building on international evidence was approved by Cabinet and MINALOC and LODA have been conducting countrywide awareness campaigns. The EPR TAF has been integral to achievements supporting drafting of the strategy, guidelines, monitoring and measurement framework, plans and trainings tools. - Ministerial approval and launch of an organisational development plan to boost local government capacity and support sustainable social protection delivery. Following capacity assessment by the TAF, the final report and capacity development plan was approved. The TAF have since drafted tools to support the government to design and monitor the impact of capacity building activities. - The Technical Assistance Facility has delivered high value capacity building support to both LODA, MINALOC and the Districts. The embedded nature of the TA Facility has been assessed to be highly effective to build trust and to provide timely and both strategic and on-demand support. The recently introduced Roving Teams to support Districts have been assessed as effective and steady improvements on VUP delivery and PFM have been registered. - The variable tranche under the EPR was disbursed in full in July 2023 as the Disbursement Linked Verification report concluded that 100% of the minimal acceptable outcomes were achieved for each DLI and of the additional criteria 91.5% were met.

The programs expected impact is: Extreme poverty eradicated, and poverty levels reduced in Rwanda. The programs key outcome is: The resilience of vulnerable men, women and children and of the social protection systems that help sustain them enhanced. Through a financial contribution and technical assistance to the Rwandan national social protection system, the program will support expanded coverage under the Vision Umurenge Program (VUP) to support poor and extreme poor households not covered by the program and contribute to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the of social protection instruments, delivery systems and graduation support packages to increase impact and help households exit poverty. The three proposed key outputs for the program are: (1) Improved access to more effective social protection for vulnerable groups, including in response to shocks through: Cash Transfers targeting the most vulnerable: (i) the scale up of Nutrition Sensitive Direct Support (NSDS) for improved nutrition outcomes for the poorest. Targeting pregnant women and children under 2, the program will enable 100% of those eligible to be reached nationally or approximately 160,000 additional households. This instrument includes conditions on recipients to access healthcare support during/after pregnancy and receive additional information on nutrition and sanitation; (ii) expanded Direct Support for people with disabilities (PwD) - adding a new category of people caring for PwD and around 40,000 households. Shock-responsive social protection: responding to national data on the scale of destruction to assets and savings as a result of climate-related shocks, the program will support the development of a system that is able to respond and adapt to households needs after a climate-related shock in order to protect livelihood gains from being eroded. Climate-sensitive and Expanded Public Works (PW): (i) modest expansion of Expanded Public Works focused on labor-constrained households (mainly women with caring responsibilities), covering up to 36,000 additional households; (ii) support to around 30,000 households through climate-sensitive public works that will focus on the poorest regions most affected by climate and other shocks. (2) Strengthened linkages between social protection and complementary services that enable sustainable graduation from extreme poverty through: Multi-Sectoral Graduation Package: building on an initial pilot on interventions aimed at supporting people to graduate or exit from poverty, this program will support future pilots that explore the best packages required to lift different groups of the population out of poverty, including investments and skills development providing livelihood support, access to markets, strengthened services (education and health), increased job opportunities to approximately 12,500 households with the potential to graduate from extreme poverty. (3) The institutional capacity for evidence-based planning and social protection service delivery enhanced by: 1) Technical assistance to support the implementation of Government of Rwandas new social protection policy and strategy; 2) Implementation support for critical staff at central and district level to support social protection implementation; 3) Independent monitoring, evaluation, and analytical work to understand the impact of social protection for improved policy design, programming and delivery. Key results to be delivered by 2026 include: - 65,000 households (approximately 250,000 people) lifted out of extreme poverty by the last year of the program. - Lives of at least 4,800 children saved due to improved nutrition. - Improved targeting of People with Disabilities, increased level of climate-sensitive and shock responsive financing.