SCALING-UP SHOCK RESPONSIVE SOCIAL PROTECTION PROJECT ADDITIONAL FINANCING

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The Scaling-up Responsive Social Protection (SSRSP) Project, the parent project, aims to protect poor and vulnerable households' consumption in response to shocks in Zambia. The SSRSP focuses on stabilizing funding for the Social Cash Transfer (SCT) program of the Government of Republic of Zambia (GRZ) at a time when the GRZ is facing fiscal challenges and households are facing increasing food prices due to shocks including climate-induced shocks. It has one component, the SCT component, to cover cash transfers to a little over one million SCT beneficiary households nation-wide. The project also provides the flexibility to undertake vertical and/or horizontal expansion of the cash transfers to respond to climate and other shocks, as required. The SSRSP builds on the results achieved under the Bank’s main lending operation in the social protection sector in Zambia, the Girls' Education and Women’s Empowerment and Livelihoods (GEWEL) Project (P151451), with a focus on the social protection program that supports the poorest families in Zambia with cash transfers. The SSRSP utilizes the existing systems and capacity built by the GEWEL project, including a Grievance Redress Mechanism (GRM), Management Information System (MIS) and digital payment system, all of which are functional nation-wide.The SSRSP Additional Financing (AF) is an additional grant from the GEWEL Multi-donor Trust Fund (MDTF) with the purpose to cover the cost overrun as the caseload of the SCT program has increased from just over one million at approval of the parent project in June 2022 to a little over 1.3 million at the end of 2023. This, coupled with the on-going and planned price and drought shock responses, has created an IDA financing gap for the SCT program under the SSRSP. The AF will not include a restructuring of the parent project, given that its PDO, results framework, and arrangements for institutional, implementation, fiduciary, as well as environmental and social management, will all remain unchanged.