The Economic Impacts of Cash Transfer Programmes in Sub-Saharan Africa

This brief brings together the critical mass of evidence that has emerged from recent rigorous impact evaluations of government-run cash transfer programmes in sub-Saharan Africa. Most, but not all, of the programmes belong to the Transfer Project, a community of practice created to share lessons, experience and expertise between evaluators, government programme managers and development partners. Under the umbrella of the Transfer Project, a subset of countries participated in the From Protection to Production (PtoP) project, which focused on measuring the impact of cash transfers on productive and economic activities. Most of these evaluations used mixed methods, combining quantitative and qualitative approaches with general equilibrium modelling of local economy impacts. This brief is based on evidence from government run cash transfer programmes, conditional or unconditional, from eight countries: Ethiopia, Malawi, Lesotho, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Ghana and Tanzania.