Madagascar Safety Nets and Resilience Project

active

Prospective

The Additional Financing (AF) aims to: i) scale-up the Madagascar Safety Nets and Resilience Project (SNRP - P179466) to cover greater numbers of beneficiaries and reach more geographic areas, as well as to enhance support for income-generating activities; and ii) address the US$30 million financing gap created by the cancellation of US$20 million in June 2024 and the December 2024 restructuring to reallocate US$10 million to support unconditional cash transfers in Antananarivo and surrounding areas to mitigate the impact of inflation on the poorest and most vulnerable. The closing date would also be extended by 12 months until March 30, 2028. While the parent project's development objective and components will remain unchanged, the AF will be used to increase coverage of social safety nets and enhance support for income-generating activities.Component 1: Safety Nets and Resilience (additional financing US$91.5 million equivalent, total US$287.4 million equivalent). This component, which includes the core and crisis response safety net programs for poor and vulnerable households, will be scaled up to cover selected additional communes within the country’s 23 regions. The new communes will be selected on the basis of poverty rates, vulnerability, and security and accessibility. Sub-component 1.1: Human Development Cash Transfer (additional financing US$44.8 million equivalent, total US$110.4 million equivalent). The HCDT program is the country’s flagship cash transfer program which aims through its accompanying measures to boost human capital of beneficiary households and to increase productive assets, with the ultimate goal of improving productivity and resilience. Under the initial financing, 331,959 households are currently receiving cash transfers, 129,234 are in their third year of program participation and 202,725 are in their first year. The additional financing will allow the expansion to another 59,000 households.Sub-component 1.2: Productive Safety Net Program (additional financing US$15.2 million equivalent, total US$78.8 million equivalent). The PSNP provides cash-for-work activities in targeted poor communities. The cash-for-work activities contribute not only to improved agriculture-based livelihoods, increased food production, and adoption of improved agricultural techniques, including: agroforestry and tree nurseries for locally-adapted nutritional crops and trees; landscape management (including anti-erosion measures, soil and water conservation, terracing, and use of ‘demi-lune’ or half-moon water-catchment technique); construction and rehabilitation of canals for irrigation; reforestation; and small-scale hydro-agricultural practices. Under the initial financing, 134,766 households are currently receiving cash transfers, of which 68,082 are in their third year of program participation and 66,684 are in their first year. The additional financing will allow the expansion to another 58,000 households for three years.Sub-component 1.3: Response to future crises (additional financing US$14.3 million equivalent, total US$35.2 million equivalent). As under the initial project, resources under this sub-component will be held in reserve to finance responses to natural, pandemic, or economic shocks and crises based on declarations of need from BNGRC and will allow for rapid, flexible responses providing: (a) unconditional cash transfers for vulnerable populations, horizontal expansion to new beneficiaries or vertical expansion for existing beneficiaries through top-ups on cash transfer amounts in areas where the cash transfer programs are operational; (b) cash-for-work activities for vulnerable populations in areas where manual labor is required to rehabilitate damaged physical infrastructure or assets, or to temporarily boost food production through agricultural-based activities; (c) rehabilitation/reconstruction of basic socio-economic infrastructure in areas affected by natural disasters; and (d) nutritional supplements for children under five living in areas most affected by severe drought in the three regions of the south (Atsimo Andrefana, Androy, Anosy). Sub-component 1.4: Resilience, economic inclusion, and human capital accompanying measures (additional financing US$17.2 million equivalent, total US$63 million equivalent). As under the initial project, this sub-component aims to boost the capacity of beneficiaries of sub-components 1.1, 1,2, and 1.3 to become more resilient and productive. To promote resilience and economic inclusion, the sub-component will provide training and microentrepreneurial support for income-generating activities to produce lasting improvements in the livelihoods of beneficiaries. To promote human capital development, households will participate in monthly accompanying measures sensitization sessions on parental education, early child development, health and nutrition of young children, school attendance (particularly for girls), support for women to access reproductive and healthcare services, activities to enhance literacy, support to acquire birth certificates and identification, and women’s empowerment (including women’s leadership and participation in decision making). Component 2: Strengthening Safety Net Administration, Monitoring, and Social Accountability (additional financing US$8.5 million equivalent, total US$35.6 million equivalent). This component, which aims to strengthen the administration of safety net programs, will receive additional resources to cover the project management expenses related to the scale-up of component 1. As under the initial project, in addition to operating costs related to program implementation, this component will finance: (i) the strengthening of the safety net administration through the provision of support for the coordination, implementation and monitoring of project activities; (ii) the implementation of safeguard requirements; (iii) the implementation of a communications strategy covering operational aspects of the project; (iv) the transition increasingly to mobile payments in partnership with mobile operators; (v) the training for implementing partners and FID staff; (vi) the continuation of strengthening of FID information systems, including interoperability with the social registry, identification systems and the Government interoperability platform—as well as exploring the use of the ICT-based citizen engagement platform being developed under the PRODIGY project to mobilize communities, seek feedback and implement behavior change communication; (vii) the implementation and strengthening of FID’s social accountability mechanisms and the project Grievance Redress Mechanism (GRM); and (viii) coordinating with local government authorities to strengthen citizen engagement. Component 3: Building the Institutional Capacity for the Coordination of the Social Protection System (additional financing US$0 million equivalent, total US$ 7.0 million). No change. As only US$1.5 million has been disbursed from this component which had an allocation of US$7.0 million under the initial financing, no additional resources will be added at this time. The sub-component will continue to support MPPSPW in: (a) the monitoring and evaluation of social protection programs; (b) the strengthening of national coordination mechanisms to support vertical and horizontal expansion of cash transfers in response to crisis; (c) the maintenance and promotion of the beneficiary registry; (d) the leveraging of the existing beneficiary registry to establish a broader social registry covering potential beneficiary households in selected areas; (e) the coordination between the social registry and the ongoing effort under the PRODIGY project to establish a national identification system that can provide assurance of a unique identity for each household in the registry; (f) the strengthening of the MPSPPW's financial management (FM) and procurement capacity; (g) the coordination of environmental

FY17 - Social Protection

World Bank

Project

Water Supply and Storage, Raw Materials, Forest Products and Packaging, Commercial, Hydro, Education, Government