Including the socially excluded in Ghana’s social protection programmes
Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA)
“There is a lack of mechanisms for collecting and managing data on poor households at the district level.” — SADA
3rd
highest poverty headcount in Ghana is noticed in the Northern Regions
11
of the northern districts have poverty incidence higher than the regional average of 44.2 percent.
May 2016 End date
May 2017
Issue
Through national social protection programmes in the form of cash transfers, social assistance and social insurance for example, Ghana has helped promote the wellbeing of the poor and vulnerable members of the country - attaining a Middle Income Country (MIC) status in 2010.
However, a recent report by ILO published in 2014 showed that vulnerable populations, especially in the savannah regions, were being excluded from benefiting from Ghana’s social programmes and identified two key reasons for this exclusion: poor targeting of the beneficiaries and the fragmentation of social protection services which often do not complement one another resulting in minimal impact on the well-being of the poor.
Project
With this project, the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) seeks to help community members exercise voice to hold social protection administrators accountable by giving them a platform to demand feedback on the quality of social protection services.
The projects aspires to:
- Build the capacity of community committees to be part of the process for selecting and monitoring beneficiaries of social protection services in their local communities alongside the government department of social welfare;
- Develop a one stop shop management information system at district and regional levels for providing objective data for targeting and monitoring beneficiaries of social protection interventions in the local communities;
- harmonize social protection services at the district and community levels to improve impact of social protection programmes for poor households .
SADA will also use the media to popularize the model, stimulate debate, facilitate feedback and disseminate the results.
Partner
The Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) is an initiative established by Act 805, 2010 as an independent and autonomous statutory corporation to “provide a framework for the comprehensive and long-term development of the Northern Savannah Ecological Zone ”. Since then, SADA’s mission has been to catalyze the transformation of the NSEZ through citizens’ mobilization; strategic planning; successful coordination, collaboration and facilitation, for effective public sector delivery and private sector investment.