Second Additional Financing for Scaling-up Shock Responsive Social Protection Project

active

Prospective

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 by stabilizing funding for the Social Cash Transfer (SCT) program of the Government of Republic of Zambia (GRZ) at a time when the Government is facing fiscal challenges and households are experiencing increasing vulnerabilities due to multiple 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 first SSRSP Additional Financing (AF1), approved in May 2024, 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, unanticipated at the time of parent project preparation.The second SSRSP Additional Financing (AF2) is an additional grant from the IDA and a potential grant from the GEWEL MDTF to scale up the SCT both vertically and horizontally to address the on-going drought effects on poor and vulnerable households disproportionately impacted by climate-induced and other shocks. Specifically, under a vertical expansion (VE), the SCT will provide a time-bound cash top-up to existing SCT households in the drought-impacted districts. Under horizontal expansion (HE), new eligible households in the same drought-impacted districts will be enrolled on a temporary basis for emergency cash assistance. Its PDO, and institutional, implementation, fiduciary, as well as environmental and social management arrangements will remain unchanged, while the results framework will be updated and the closing date of the parent project will be extended by six months from June 2025 to December 2025, in line with the closing date of the AF2.

Social Protection

World Bank Group

Project

Government, Education