N’djamena, Chad, 17 June 2019 (ECA) - A dissemination workshop was organized by ECA Gender, Poverty and Social Policy Division in collaboration with the Ministry of Economy, Plan and Development in N’djamena, Chad. This dissemination workshop forms part of an ECA project on the Better Monitoring of Social Protection. The objective of the project is to assist member states in monitoring resources required to achieve the specific social protection goals (1,5,6 and 10) of 2030 Agenda and Africa 2063 on social protection. The specific objective in Chad was to share the initial country results with a larger national stakeholder of national senior policy makers, academia, UN agencies for wider engagement and review of results.
The initial results from Chad show that there is a larger remit of social protection that includes health and education. The larger remit is aligned to the African Union Social Protection Strategy, Windhoek 2008 and the 2030 Agenda of a social protection floor. The initial results also show that in line with the regional and global frameworks mentioned, social protection programmes are policy instruments for the reduction of poverty and inequality. Furthermore, the life cycle approach used by Chad Government follows universal application across all age groups and targeting specific vulnerability according to resource and other constraints.
The Chad Initial results indicate that some progress has been achieved. Firstly, the National Strategy of Social Protection (2014-2018) is a recognition of the critical importance of social protection. This led to public resources allocated towards this end. Indeed, in the 2016-2020 national plan resource allocations towards education and health (part of the social protection strategy) were 4.5 percent of total government spending. The Chad country report also shows that poverty dropped from 55 to 46.7 percent although exclusive attribution to the programme is difficult to establish. A point clearly made is that the drop in petrol price in 2014 severely affected resource availability for social protection. A challenge remains on the predictability of resources for effective social protection and social investment allocation and the vulnerability of the country to external shocks.
The review of the Chad country study indicated that the acknowledgement of the role of social protection in the reduction of poverty and inequality was a step in the right direction. Furthermore, the ECA support to Chad in improving monitoring of social protection including social investments in line with 2030 Agenda and Africa 2063 was appreciated.
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Economic Commission for Africa
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