SPaN (2019) Case Study: Mali

This Case Study on Mali summarizes the context and main features of the alignment (ex post) of social protection programmes in response to slow onset natural disaster (drought).

Mali has high levels of poverty and is beset by recurrent and cyclical droughts. Without formal social protection systems, this has led to the need for seasonal humanitarian assistance to address repeated food and nutrition crises. Political turmoil in Mali in 2012-2013 combined with severe drought led to another major food and nutrition crisis in the country, particularly in insecure areas in the north.

Case Study Mali (PDF)

An EU ‘Linking Relief to Recovery and Development’ funding envelope of EUR 23 million, manged by ECHO, was set up to facilitate provision of basic social services by International NGOs until state services were restored. An additional EUR 10 million was provided for emergency cash assistance and lay foundations for social transfer programmes for resilience building. These led to the establishment of a common urgent response framework, helping people not only to meet their basic immediate needs, but also to invest in property to generate income and start a recovery process.

The action of this Cadre Commun sur les Filets Sociaux (CCFS) initiative started in a context of urgency but with a view to a transition to sustainable development in line with the linking relief, rehabilitation and development (LRRD) concept. The social protection system in the country was just emerging and political interest in the need for long-term social transfers was growing.

In the south of the country the World Bank was supporting the Government of Mali in the design and implementation of a pilot poverty-targeted cash-based social transfer programme, known as “Jigisemejiri”. This delivers Central African Franc (CFA) 10 000 (USD 16) a month to registered households for three years, with the first ‘pilot’ cohort of 5 000 households enrolled in 2014 and 44 000 households reached by 2015. Due to the security crisis, this first phase of implementation was limited to only 100 of Mali’s 700 communes in the south and first transfers in the south of the country only began in early 2014.

Following a Commission-driven initiative to have informal consortium-like groupings of NGOs with clear funding guidelines developed in 2013, the major International NGOs operational in Northern Mali came together to design two successive, joint humanitarian Cash Transfer Programmes (CTPs), the CCFS and the Cadre Commun Transferts Sociaux (CCTS). These had the intention of complementing on-going in-kind humanitarian response whilst also engaging and influencing development actors on the importance of moving to long-term and predictable social transfers in the north.

The Emergency Safety Net Programme (with European Development Fund (EDF) envelope B funding from the European Commission Directorate-General for International Cooperation and Development (DG DEVCO)) called CCFS, and subsequent follow-up programmes were designed in close collaboration between DG ECHO and EU Delegation in Mali from 2013 onwards.

The humanitarian food assistance interventions in 2012/13 implemented separately by various NGOs sought to improve coordination among humanitarian actors in the north of Mali. The aim was to lay the foundations of a future national social assistance system and to provide incentives for development donors to get involved, in order to ensure sustainability, based on shared responsibility among donors, e.g. by mobilising alternative funding sources on top of humanitarian funding.

The main strategy adopted consisted of: (i) common Human Resources to increase technical expertise, (ii) grouping NGOs in an informal consortium so they become a valid interlocutor for government and development donors; (iii) improved capacity to facilitate advocacy on key messages, and (iv) strengthened Monitoring & Evaluation competence to produce and disseminate knowledge.

The Mali case study was produced as part of the “Guidance Package on Social Protection across the HumanitarianDevelopment Nexus” (SPaN). Visit the Guidance Package´s community page for a full list of SPaN´s studies.