Conditional Cash Transfers in the African Context: An Explorative Study on the Impacts of CCTs in Burkina Faso
Author(s)
Malmi, Anna HelenaKeywords
gender division of laborpoverty
conditional cash transfers
social policies
women’s empowerment
Social Sciences
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http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/2796265Abstract
The proliferation of poverty and global inequality between and within the countries has resulted in an emerging consensus among the actors in the field of international development on the importance of social policies in the process of development. One type of social policy measures employed to tackle poverty is Conditional Cash Transfers (CCT). These have been formed within the World Bank Group and extensively implemented in Latin American and Caribbean countries. The idea of CCTs is to break down the intergenerational transmission of poverty by attacking both demand and supply side of social services. Despite the seemingly positive findings on the impacts of CCTs in Latin America and the Caribbean they are also widely criticized. CCTs have fairly recently been adopted by some African countries and more specifically by Burkina Faso. However questions arise on the suitability of CCTs in a very different contextual setting. Thus this study is an explorative study on the impacts of CCT program Orphans and Vulnerable Children in Burkina Faso with the aim to provide insights to the realities lived by the people and their experiences participating in the OEV program. More specifically this study endeavors to shead light on the ways the cash was used by the beneficiary households, on its gender implications and on the perceptions of the participants regarding the implementation and execution of the program. The analysis is based on empirical data collected by employing qualitative methods in the province of Nahouri in Burkina Faso. The data is analyzed through three main theoretical frameworks that of social policy and development, social policy and gender and women’s empowerment. The study concludes that CCTs despite having positive short term effects on poverty in the context of the study are unlikely to bring long term sustainable changes. It is suggested that the role of men in CCTs should be further investigated and that targeting in contexts where poverty is widespread might have adverse impacts in terms of social cohesion, inequality and poverty.Date
2012Type
M2Identifier
oai:lup-student-papers.lub.lu.se:2796265http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/2796265