Providing social protection for ultra-poor people in Malawi

Malawi	Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs

A woman holding her UBR card, sitting with other women in a meadow.

Context

Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world, ranked 169 out of 191 in the 2021/2022 Human Development Report. The Malawi Poverty Index Report 2021 designates 61.7 per cent of Malawi’s population as multidimensionally poor, with the highest poverty incidence in rural areas at 70 per cent.

In 2018, the Malawi Government adopted the Malawi National Social Support Programme (MNSSP) II which currently has three core pillars:

supporting the consumption needs of poor households through timely, adequate and predictable cash transfers,
building resilient livelihoods to set households on graduation pathways through inter-programme linkages,
developing a shock-sensitive system of social protection that responds to seasonal needs.

As the practical implementation of social protection programmes in Malawi remains fragmented, MNSSP II sees a need for better coordination and collaboration in the social protection sector.

UBR data validation: Council official validating names of community members through their UBR blue cards

Objective

The social protection system in Malawi is improving its services to the poor population in terms of performance, identification and access.

Approach

The third phase of the project (2022 - 2025) focuses on the three priorities:

Improving the ability of the government to steer the implementation of social protection and related strategy processes.
Further consolidating the functionality and institutionalisation of the Unified Beneficiary Registry (UBR), an integrated social database with information of beneficiaries of social protection programmes.
Supporting the beneficiaries of social protection programmes in accessing complementary measures.

The European Union (EU) co-financed component of the project focuses on delivering and improving social protection measures. For example, it looks at how cash transfers can be done in a transparent and less error-prone way. The focus of this component is: