The Government of Ethiopia joining hands with development partners has been working to increase families’ long-term resilience to food shortages. The Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) is one among such efforts.
PSNP existed since 2005 and has made significant contributions to improved food security in Ethiopia. It is aimed at enabling the rural poor, facing chronic food insecurity, to resist shocks, create assets and become food self-sufficient.
PSNP provides multi-annual predictable transfers, as food, cash or a combination of both, to help chronically food insecure people survive food deficit periods and avoid depleting their productive assets while attempting to meet their basic food requirements, as shown in launching workshop of PSNP IV.
PSNP’s four major goals are: to support the rural transformation process; to prevent long-term consequences of short-term food inaccessibility; to encourage households to engage in production and investment; and to promote market development by increasing household purchasing power.
A number of studies have shown that PSNP has had a positive impact on the livelihoods of households. It has enhanced community-level infrastructure and contributed to environmental transformation.
At the household level, families have benefited from improved food security, increased asset creation and protection, increased utilization of education and health services and improved agricultural productivity, report of World Food Programme, 2012 shows.
Last week, another project Climate Smart Mainstreaming in the Productive Safety Net Programme (CSM-PSNP) was launched last week in Adama town of Oromia State.
Rural Transformation and Resilience Team Leader at European Union, Dominique Davoux, told to The Ethiopian Herald that the aim of this project is to mainstream climate smart solution. He said that the European Union supported 8 million USD for technical assistance and capacity development.
To him the goal of the project is to improve resilience and adaptive capacity of targeted poor and vulnerable communities in Ethiopia to Climate Change driven impacts. He said, “The project will be completed within four years.”
Director of Department of Natural Resources Development, Conservation and Utilization of the Ministry of Agriculture, Tefera Tadesse, said that PSNP operates in Afar, Amhara, Dire Dawa, Harari, Oromiya, SNNP, Somali and Tigray regions. Development partners contribute to PSNP.
The Ministry of Agriculture, along with regional governments, is responsible for the programme coordination, management and implementation.
These types of programs are done by the support of our development partners. The program runs in 350 woredas (districts) in eight regions.
Dr. Kaba Urgesa, State Minister at the Ministry of Agriculture expressed at the launching workshop that the PSNP is in its fourth generation of the programme, currently under implementation in 350 woredas (districts) in eight regions identified to be chronically food insecure.
He said that PSNP possess a robust opportunity for climate smart development integration and complementarities with climate sensitive implementation of other related agriculture, pastoral and livelihood programs in which the project should exploit this opportunity to bring change.
The approach of the project should focus on capitalizing to the existing initiatives and building a system on how to mainstream the climate smart planning and implementation of the PSNP and beyond, he recommended.
This action focus on scalable activities that work from actual PSNP capacities with a goal of increasing PSNP impacts, he added.
“The government of Ethiopia gives higher priority to support the poor and vulnerable households in the rural areas of the country”, he indicated.
Major public work subprojects are biophysical soil and water conservation; forestry, agro-forestry and forage development; water projects, community micro level construction; rehabilitation; social infrastructure activities construction; and nutrition based public work activities, according to him.
According to The World Bank (2018), Sub-Saharan African countries spend an average of USD 16 per citizen annually on safety net programs, whereas countries in the Latin America and the Caribbean region spend an average of USD 158 per citizen annually. Globally, developing and transition economies spend an average of 1.5 percent of GDP on safety net programs.
Herald March 29/2019
BY ABDUREZAK MOHAMMED
