Towards an Inclusive and Empowered Ethiopia: Improving Social Safety Nets to Reduce Urban Poverty
Email As of October 2020, the Urban Productive Safety Net Project is on track to reach 604,000 of the poorest and most vulnerable Ethiopians, of whom 60 percent are women. The project’s three-pronged model combines public works and livelihood grants for some of the poorest urban households. It supports direct cash transfers for pregnant mothers, disabled, and the elderly, and provides social services for the destitute.
Challenge
Despite Ethiopia’s strong economic growth since 2005, pockets of poverty and destitution persist. Ethiopia’s urban population has grown fast from a relatively low base. While poverty reduction in urban areas is increasing, and is likely to grow, poverty remains relatively high in small towns and in the capital, Addis Ababa, where one fifth of Ethiopia’s urban dwellers are located.
Photo: Miriam Schneidman With World Bank support, the government of Rwanda has developed a bold new approach to tackle stunting, chronic malnutrition, with an enhanced package of multisectoral interventions. As a result, there has been a significant uptake in health and nutrition services, such as growth monitoring and micronutrient supplementation, expanded access to early childhood development services, and reforms to community-based delivery platforms.
Challenge
Rwanda has made remarkable progress on infant, child and maternal mortality, meeting or exceeding most goals. However, stunting remained stubbornly high at about 38 percent in 2015 and affected nearly 50 percent of the poorest children. In 2017, the government made a high-level political commitment to drastically reduce stunting, recognizing it impeded cognitive development, educational attainment, and lifetime earnings and deprived the economy of critical human capital to attaining middle-income status. An