Isn’t it time we stopped experimenting with the lives of the most vulnerable?

This blog was first published jointly with RHVP colleagues as a Wahenga Comment

Across southern Africa, the “piloting” of new social protection approaches is popular amongst donors, who fund such initiatives, and NGOs, who implement them. Current pilot activities range from cash transfers in Zambia to household vegetable gardens in Lesotho. These pilots target the most vulnerable members of communities and are, by their nature, of limited duration. Interventions such as these run the risk of superimposing new social protection measures on top of pre-existing informal community-based support systems. Even when these new approaches are successful, donor funding eventually comes to an end. When this occurs, what happens to the beneficiaries that the pilots were supporting?

The term “pilot” is normally used to describe a preliminary phase of a programme which is expected to be extended in terms of its duration and its coverage. The pilot phase is used to iron out glitches and teething problems before the programme is rolled out.

But can we really use this term to describe the range of current donor sponsored NGO initiatives in social protection which scatter the region? How many of these have a clearly articulated roll-out or exit strategy? How many have the endorsement and backing of the governments and a commitment to bring them on to the national budget once the donor funding ends? How many donors and NGOs see beyond the pilot exercise?

Where they don’t, are these various initiatives not just experimenting with the livelihoods and indeed the lives of the people they term as “beneficiaries”? A social protection pilot that comes into a community to try out a new form of transfer can undermine existing coping systems, build reliance on the new transfer and create expectations of future support. When the pilot comes to an end and if it is not brought into the mainstream of an adequately funded and properly managed on-budget programme, the beneficiaries may even be left in a more vulnerable state than before the pilot entered their lives.

So what should we be doing differently? For one thing we need to be funding more work on understanding how communities look after themselves and finding ways to support this. If successful, this would help share the burden of social responsibility and reduce the cost of social protection to the government (one such initiative is being undertaken by CRS in Kasungu district, Malawi).

Another step would be to ensure that donors and NGOs adopt a more responsible attitude when it comes to implementing social protection pilots. Such "pilots" should only ever be considered if they are (a) backed by clear plans and financial guarantees for subsequent large-scale roll-out and (b) endorsed by government as part of a comprehensive social protection strategy.

Isn’t it time we stopped experimenting and started implementing?