Ethiopia’s Rural Safety Net Enables Mother to Invest in Children’s Education

Shemsi Adem looked away when asked about her husband. He had died more than 15 years ago.

In the months that followed his death, grieving and alone, she had few options to ensure that her children received enough to eat. The arid and dusty landscape where she made her home in Hulahulul kebele, 25 kilometers away from the city of Dire Dawa in southeastern Ethiopia, afforded her and most in her community few livelihood opportunities.

Without the benefit of access to an irrigated farm, Shemsi could only search for bits of brush in the surrounding wilderness. Once she had gathered enough sticks, she would load the bundle on her donkey and set off, hours before sunrise, to the nearest town-about two hours away. The long journey exposed her to the risk of encountering wild animals and the fear of being sexually assaulted.

Her children would be asleep when she left, and selling the firewood meant she would spend the whole day in town, unable to return home until well after dark.

Her circumstances changed nine years ago when community members recommended that she become a beneficiary of the government-implemented Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) deployed in rural areas. Supported by the World Bank's Strengthen Ethiopia's Adaptive Safety Net Project (which relies on $1.1 million of IDA resources) and a World Bank-executed multi-donor trust fund (of $251 million), along with contributions from 12 other development partners which complement the government's own financing, the PSNP is a cash and food transfer program that works across ten regions in Ethiopia, including the rural kebeles surrounding Dire Dawa. Every five years, a community task force comprised of government officials, NGO staff, and community members identify extremely poor and vulnerable households for inclusion in the program.

Those selected receive cash or food transfers in exchange for their participation in public works that aim to rehabilitate the area's degraded watershed. In Hulahulul kebele, Shemsi worked alongside others to build terracing structures on selected hillsides, fence off area enclosures, and plant seeds at the tree nursery nearby.

By providing Shemsi with an opportunity of earning an income while working closer to home, the public works program reduced her overall work burden and enabled her to spend more meaningful time with her children.

Ethiopia's Rural Safety Net Works to Support Female-Headed Households

Throughout its implementation, the PSNP has adapted itself to serve the needs of vulnerable women like Shemsi. The program has always included gender-related provisions: for example, it prioritizes the inclusion of female-headed households and stipulates that women comprise half of the community targeting task forces.

More recently, the Ministry of Agriculture's Food Security Coordination Office (FSCO), which is responsible for coordinating the program, undertook a gender analysis to assess how to better support the participating women. One of the solutions consisted in decreasing the workload of female-headed households: while Shemsi previously worked fifteen days a month for the PSNP, she now works only ten.

Retta Berhanu, the Public Works Coordinator for Dire Dawa's regional office, described other changes. "Women who head their households, given how pressed they are for time, are entitled to a 50% reduction of public works hours compared to their male counterparts. They are also assigned lighter public works activities. Moreover, if a female-headed household is found to be without adequate labor-for example, for farming her land-public works beneficiaries will organize to help. This is a new provision about which we are raising awareness."

Shemsi has so far invested her time in small livelihood activities, such as fattening goats, and channels all the income she gets into improving the education of her children.

Over the past nine years, she has seen her community's watershed transform thanks to the PSNP's public works activities. As the watershed recovered and the water table rose, springs started to flow year-round. Many of her fellow PSNP beneficiaries have begun to use plots of land from the watershed to cultivate fruit trees and vegetables.

For Shemsi, the greatest reward for her participation in the safety net has been to see her children grow up and thrive. "My children are now almost ready to start taking care of themselves," she said with a proud smile. "One has gone to college and graduated. Another has a two-year diploma and is looking for a job. If there had been no safety net, I would not have been able to achieve any of this."