U.S. research body hails Zambia's anti-poverty programs

A U.S.-based research organization has hailed Zambian programs aimed at fighting poverty as a shining example of alleviating hunger and increasing food supply in poor African countries, a statement seen on Thursday said.

The American Institutes for Research (AIR) said Zambia's cash transfer programs designed to alleviate poverty had achieved their goals and helped increase incomes for impoverished families.

According to the statement, the program has succeeded among Zambia's poor and could offer lessons for battling African poverty as African nations have increasingly embrace cash transfers to combat the continent's cycle of poverty.

The statement noted that the social cash transfer programs were unconditional by providing small consistent sums of money with no strings attached on how they were spent and that the programs bucked general criticisms that cash transfers spared dependency.

"Rather, the discretionary approach empowered families, who used the grants to improve their lives in ways that made sense given their individual circumstances. At no point during the multi-year grants did alcohol consumption increase. Nor was there any impact on fertility, according to the evaluations," it added.

The programs, it said, enable beneficiaries to not only eat more meals and build more reliable food reserves but the families used the money to improve their housing, buy additional necessities for their children, acquire more livestock and reduce debt.

"The unconditional approach worked. And because it did, the region is making positive strides. Without a doubt, the changes would not have been possible without AIR's rigorous evaluations," Stanfield Michelo, director of social welfare at Zambia's Ministry of Community Development and Social Welfare said.

The organization conducted the research to establish how social cash transfer programs have impacted lives in Zambia in order to build lessons for other African countries.

The studies, commissioned by the United Nations children's agency, UNICEF, are likely to be closely watched as African nations increasingly embrace cash transfers to combat poverty.

Currently, South Africa's program is the largest, with roughly 16.1 million people- about a third of its population, receiving some kind of social grant.

The evaluation of the Child Grant cash-transfer program lasted four years, and the evaluation of the Multiple Category Targeting Grant lasted three years.

Begun in 2010 in three of Zambia's districts, the Child Grant cash-transfer program was open to all households with at least one child under the age of four and were randomly assigned to receive cash transfers of 12 U.S. dollars and half to a control group that did not receive fund.

On the other hand, the Multi-Category Targeting Grant was aimed at poor households with fewer able-bodied people to farm, due largely to a missing generation of parents in their 30s and 40s and dis-proportionally high numbers of adolescents and orphans cared for by widows and grandparents. Endit