Brief: Towards shock-responsive social protection: lessons from the COVID-19 response in Ethiopia

COVID-19 and national and international measures to curb its spread, may have pushed 15 million more people below the poverty line in Ethiopia. This policy brief draws on key learnings from the Ethiopia country case study, focused on the social protection response to COVID-19 and identifies recommendations to improve the shock responsiveness of the social protection sector. Recommendations in this policy brief focus on improving Disaster Risk Financing, the need to operationalize the management information systems of the flagship social safety net programmes and the consolidation of existing safety net programmes in to a single national programme in the long-term.