Policy ideas about formal social transfers emerged in Malawi in the early 1990s after a UN-
funded Situation Analysis of Poverty published in 1993 revealed widespread and pervasive
poverty, manifested by multiple adverse indicators (Government of Malawi/United Nations
1993). The analysis was conducted at the peak of the political transition which culminated in
the first multiparty general elections in May 1994. During the campaign, the main opposition
United Democratic Front (UDF) party had campaigned on a promise to reduce poverty.
Immediately after the general election, the winning UDF-led government launched a Poverty
Alleviation Programme (PAP) in August 1994. Between 1994 and 1995, the government set
up a poverty alleviation framework and implementation structure, coordinated by a secretariat
in the Ministry of Economic Planning and Development (MEPD). The government also
organized a series of stakeholder workshops to discuss ideas around social funds that were
emerging from the World Bank. This process eventually culminated in the establishment of
the Malawi Social Action Fund (MASAF) which the president launched in August 1996 as its
flagship poverty alleviation strategy (Bloom et al. 2005).
27Since 1996, MASAF has evolved
in terms of scope and management, and three distinct phases can be identified:
(1) The first phase (MASAF 1: 1995-1999) obtained funding of US$56 million and
comprised two components; a Community Sub-Project (CSP) and a Public Works
Programme (PWP).
(2) The second phase (MASAF II: 1999-2003) became effective in 1998 and ran until
2003 with further World Bank funding of US$66 million. MASAF II added a third
component known as Social Sub-Projects or sponsored sub-projects (SSP).
(3) The third phase (MASAF III: 2003-2015) became effective in November 2003 with a
funding commitment of US$240 million, with further details as follows.
The community sub-projects (CSP) component financed community-driven and managed
infrastructure projects such as construction of school blocks, health centres and bridges.
MASAF disbursed funds directly to the communities in three tranches, upon accounting of
first tranches. The Sponsored Sub Projects (SSP) component addressed the needs of groups
such as orphans, persons with disabilities, street children and people living with HIV/AIDS
whose needs the design of MASAF I had inadvertently ignored. Most projects were income
generating activities, early childhood development centres, food security and nutrition and
vocational skills training. MASAF disbursed funds to Project Support Committees (PSCs)
through a sponsoring agency (SA) that managed the resources on behalf of the communities.
The sponsoring agencies were mostly NGOs with technical capacity in the selected project,
and already working in the community.
The focus of this section is particularly on public works programmes (PWPs) which comprise
Malawi’s major social safety net. The first PWP was implemented during MASAF I as a cash
transfer-based safety net pilot in response to income poverty and food insecurity that had been
identified in the earlier poverty assessment, and had been followed up in a vulnerability
assessment mapping (VAM) in 1996. In terms of budget allocation, PWPs accounted for 27
per cent of the financial resources of MASAF I and 20.6 per cent of MASAF II. In the
27
MASAF was a World Bank funded project the government publicised it as UDF’s commitment to reducing poverty in a similar way the government has publicised the ISP as the Democratic Development Party (DPP) commitment to reducing hunger.
decentralised structure, PWPs are nowadays implemented by district assemblies with MASAF
as the principle funding agency (Bloom et al. 2005, Government of Malawi 2005a).
The programme involves labour-intensive public works such as building or rehabilitating
community roads, dams, forests and other environmental assets. The programme targets poor
and vulnerable but economically active individuals who can provide labour. The targeting
follows a three-tier system that involves (a) geographic targeting using VAM to identify
communities within a district that are poorest and at risk of food insecurity; (b) community
targeting using community committees to identify and select deserving individuals; and (c)
self targeting in which the wage rate is set at 20 per cent below the government minimum
wage to ensure that only genuinely needy individuals participate. During MASAF I and II, the
cash transfer was pegged at MK43 for a four-hour task in a day. Following the 2001/02
drought, MASAF’s PWP was redesigned as a conditional cash transfer (PWP-CCT) involving
a fixed ten days of work at MK200 per day. It was implemented between October and
December, prior to the onset of agricultural season. The unenforceable conditions were that
beneficiaries would use the cash to buy agricultural inputs. Following another hunger in
2004/05 that compelled the government to introduce the input subsidy programme, the
government now holds the view that the PWP-CCT programme is implemented to provide
cash with which to redeem coupons provided in the input subsidy programme. From MASAF
operational guidelines, PWP funds would be released to districts when the subsidized farm
inputs were available on the market; every participant would receive MK2400 for 12 days’ of
4 hour work per day (Government of Malawi 2007d, p.4). The government expects
participants to purchase at least one 50-kg bag of maize and one 50-kg bag of the subsidized
fertilizer (Barnett et al. 2008, p.44).
In addition to MASAF’s continuing PWP funded by the World Bank, the government has
implemented other variants through MASAF and other institutions to address specific short-
term shocks. For example, following the 2001-02 drought, the World Bank provided an
additional US$6 million through an Emergency Drought Recovery Project (EDRP) for relief
related transfers through PWPs from 2002 to 2005. The Department for International
Development (DFID) also provided US$12.2 million to implement PWPs in selected districts.
The first phase called DFID 1 was implemented by MASAF in 2001-02. The second phase
was implemented in 2002-04 through an international NGO (CARE) in a project called the
Improving Livelihoods through Public Works Programme (ILTPWP). The government
provided MK113 million (US$1.26 million) to implement the Relief Cash for Work
Programme (RCWP) in 2002-043. Another non-MASAF public works programme has been
funded by the European Union (EU) since 2001 and is known as the Government of
Malawi/European Union (GoM/EU) Income Generating Public Works Programme (IGPWP)
(Chirwa 2007).
The main phase of the IGPWP ran from 2001 to 2005 with the aim of reducing poverty and
improving food security. It covered all districts and, like MASAF’s PWPs, focused on
rehabilitation and maintenance of rural roads, afforestation projects, and small-scale irrigation
schemes. Unlike MASAF, the programme worked with local contractors who in turn recruited
beneficiaries. The wage rate varied between contractors but was set at a minimum of MK64
per 6-hour task. Between 2002 and 2004, the GoM/EU implemented a PWP Food Security
Programme through five district assemblies in the central region targeting the ‘rural poor with
surplus labour’. Local leaders identified and selected beneficiaries in consultation with district
officials (leadership beneficiary selection). The wage rate was set at MK147 for a 5-hour task.
In the 2005/06 hungry season, GoM/EU implemented a Special Programme for Relief and
Investment in Needy Times (SPRINT) between November 2005 and March 2006 in
communities that were identified through VAM to be badly hit by the food crisis. SPRINT
beneficiaries were selected by community committees (community targeting) and were paid
MK150 per day for an average period of 20 days. Since 2005, the main IGPWP has continued
with the local contractor approach, but local leaders are involved in rationing beneficiaries.
The wage rate in 2009 was MK150 for a 6-hr task (Chirwa 2007).
The third major safety net public works programme is the nationwide Special Government
Public Works Programme (SGPWP) managed by Ministry of Transport and Public Works
since 2005, and funded by the government. It is implemented by the District Assemblies and
covers all the districts in Malawi. District officials decide on the roads to be rehabilitated in
district but the beneficiaries are identified and selected by local leaders through a rationing
approach. The wage rate is set at MK200 per day for an 8 hour task (Devereux et al. 2006a,
Chirwa 2007, Ntata 2010). Other PWPs in Malawi include those implemented by NGOs such
as World Vision International, Catholic Relief Services, Malawi Red Cross, Save the
Children, OXFAM and others (World Bank 2007a, p.31). Table 3.3 provides summary of
some (and not all) of the major PWPs in Malawi in terms of timing, budgets and their sources.
Table 3.3: Major Public Works Programmes in Malawi, 1996-2008
Institution Public Works Programme Period Budget(US$ million) Source of Funds MASAF MASAF II PWP 1999-2002 13.10 IDA EDRP 2002-2003 6.37 IDA DFID I 2001-2002 4.25 DFID ILTPWP 2002-2004 7.95 DFID RCWP 2002-2003 1.40 GoM PWP-CCT 2005-2006 12.10 IDA PWP-CCT 2007-2008 3.40 IDA
GOM/EU Food Security Programme 2003-2006 84.90 EU Public Works Programme 2003-2006 34.90 EU Income Generating PWP 2003-2006 2.70 EU Ministry of
Transport & Public Works
Special Public Works
Programme 2003-2006 3.30 GoM
Source: Government of Malawi (2003a, p.23, 2007d, p.10), Barnett, et al (2008, p.45),
World Bank (2007a, p.33).
Since 2005, there has been a shift in emphasis regarding social transfers in Malawi. This has
involved a move away from seasonal PWPs towards cash transfers that are paid continuously
(on a monthly basis) across the calendar year. The Mchinji social cash transfer scheme
(Chapter 6 of this thesis) was designed in 2005 and implemented in 2006. The scheme
replicates design features that were devised earlier for a social cash transfer pilot in Kalomo
district in Zambia (Schubert 2003, 2006, Miller et al. 2010). As the first such scheme in the
region, and given the burgeoning enthusiasm for cash transfers amongst bilateral donors and
international NGOs in this period, the Kalomo scheme acquired almost celebrity status. In
March 2006, the African Union held a conference on social protection attended by 13 African
heads-of-state, in Livingstone in Zambia, the proceedings of which involved a visit to the
nearby Kalomo scheme. This resulted in the Livingstone Call for Action in which the African
Union pledged to encourage its member countries to adopt social cash transfer policies as part
of their social protection strategies (African Union 2006).
In addition to the Mchinji social cash transfer scheme, there were other, shorter term,
unconditional cash transfer projects in Malawi in the 2000s. These include a component of
Concern Universal’s safety nets scheme in Dedza district (Levy et al. 2002); an Oxfam social
cash transfers scheme implemented in Thyolo district (Harvey and Savage 2006); and the
Concern Worldwide cash transfer scheme in Dowa district in the 2005-06 season called the
Dowa Emergency Cash Transfer (DECT) scheme (Devereux et al. 2006b). These schemes did
not involve routine social cash transfers of long duration, rather they were short-term
responses to immediate deprivation, with limited timescales. Nevertheless, they provided
considerable impetus to the search in Malawi for innovative ways to tackle chronic
vulnerability, and to examine alternatives to the safety net PWP approach (Devereux 2008).
Between 2006 and 2008, donors and NGOs helped the government to formulate a Social
Protection Policy the goal of which is to reduce poverty and enable the poor to move out of
poverty and vulnerability. It sets out four pillars, comprising (i) provision of welfare support
to the most needy, (ii) protection of assets, (iii) livelihood promotion through productivity
enhancement, and (iv) policy linkages and mainstreaming within government. In 2008, the
Cabinet discussed the policy but did not approve it because the narrative used higher poverty
rates (52 per cent from IHS2) when later welfare monitoring surveys revealed apparent
decline to 40 per cent by 2007. The cabinet changed the name ‘social protection policy’ to
‘Social Support Policy’ because the former implied dependency on the state (Chinsinga 2009,
Government of Malawi 2009h, p.9). A second draft of January 2009 incorporated the
directives (Government of Malawi 2009g) but, at the time of writing this thesis, the policy is
yet to obtain official status because the Cabinet again failed to approve it in June 2010
(Government of Malawi 2010i). The policy represents a broader and more predictable
resource commitment from government and donors to respond to vulnerability (FANTA
2007, p.22) but the formulation process is also faulted for lacking local participation since it
was driven by donors and not government and also lacked political or grassroots input
(Chinsinga 2007d).
The policy builds on previous safety net strategies which can be traced to earlier initiatives in
1999 when the World Bank led a process for the design of a National Safety Net Strategy
(NSNS) (World Bank 1999). The NSNS recommendation was delivered to the government in
2000 but no further action was taken at that time (World Bank 2007a). In 2002, fresh efforts
were initiated to put in place a National Safety Nets Programme linked to the 2002-2005
Malawi Poverty Reduction Strategy (MPRS) which provided for safety nets in order to
improve the lives of the most vulnerable people (Government of Malawi 2002a). A third set
of efforts emerged during the formulation of the Malawi Growth and Development Strategy
(MGDS) covering the period 2006-2011 (Government of Malawi 2006a).
There have also been attempts to improve coordination of social transfer initiatives. Initially,
safety nets were coordinated by the Poverty Alleviation Programme (PAP) Unit in the then
National Economic Council (NEC), and operated under a Presidential Council on Poverty
Alleviation. The coordination then moved to a Safety Nets Unit in the Ministry of Economic
Planning and Development when NEC was dissolved, and later to the Department of Poverty
and Disaster Management Affairs (DPDMA) in the Office of the President and Cabinet.
Currently, social protection is coordinated by a Social Protection Unit in the Ministry of
Economic Planning and Development. It operates under a National Social Protection Steering
Committee (NSSSC) comprising principal secretaries from the key ministries, and heads of
donor agencies and civil society which is represented by the Council for Non Governmental
Organizations in Malawi (CONGOMA), a coordinating body for civil society organizations in
Malawi (World Bank 2007a, Government of Malawi 2008i). However, the Social Protection
Unit mandated to coordinate implementation of the Social Support Policy remains a one-man
office (staffed by a Director) and the government continues to implement a variety of social
transfers using parallel structures, some of them even located in the same ministry as the
Social Protection Unit (e.g. Department of Disaster Preparedness and Management).
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