HOUSEHOLD EMPOWERMENT AND HOUSEHOLD GRADUATION FROM SOCIAL PROTECTION PROGRAMMES: THE CASE OF CASH FOR ASSETS PROGRAMME IN TAITA TAVETA COUNTY, KENYA
Christine Maureen Adiema - Master of Public Policy and Administration, Kenyatta University, Kenya
Dr. Lawrence Wainaina - Department of Business Administration, School of Business, Kenyatta University, Kenya
Dr. Patrick Mbataru - Department of Business Administration, School of Business, Kenyatta University, Kenya
ABSTRACT
Social Protection interventions have been part of modern government models and are key components of social well state. In Kenya, social protection has been embedded in the legislation through the Basic Social Protection Law and the Constitution respectively. The Social protection programmes provide cash incentives to households to sustain household welfare. The Cash for Assets (CFA) programme is the only productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) that targets food insecure households affected by protracted drought. Social Protection programmes have shown potential in systematically graduating food insecure households from dependence on cash support. Trends in the CFA programme, whose implementation is coordinated by the National Drought Management Authority (NDMA) under the Ministry of Devolution and Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASAL), has demonstrated the contrary without following a systematic process. Graduation is a new concept in Kenya’s social protection strategies. It is necessitated by the need for households that have become resilient to food security shocks to systematically rather than voluntarily draw themselves off cash support. This study aimed to analyse and bring out the pathways in household graduation that has enabled household self-reliance from initial dependence on cash support. A descriptive research design was employed to examine household graduation from cash support to self-reliance in social protection programmes; the case of cash for assets programme in Mwatate Sub-County, Taita-Taveta County. Simple random sampling and purposive sampling technique were used to derive a representative sample of beneficiary and implementation partners respectively. The Sustainable Livelihood Framework was used as the theoretical framework to analyse the determinants of household graduation as attained by households. Primary and Secondary data was collected using interviews and semi-structured questionnaires and analysed using Microsoft Excel and Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Inferential statistics were used to draw conclusions from the collected data and presented in pie charts, bar graphs, frequency tables and percentages where applicable, to aid in further data analysis. The study findings established that household empowerment, household food security, market linkage through surplus production and adoption of livelihood strategies had a positive effect on graduation. The impact of market linkage through surplus production and adopted livelihood strategies were found to be very significant in the graduation pathway. Based on the findings of this study, it was concluded that self-reliance which led to graduation from social protection programmes such as CFA is heavily dependent on empowerment of the beneficiaries in term of skills and knowledge. Beneficiaries with adequate and relevant skills and knowledge were more likely to become self-reliant when the skills were applied to support household food security. The study further concluded that household food security facilitated subsequent graduation. The study also recommended that stakeholders should devise context specific graduation models using the relationships between the determinants to develop systemic graduation thresholds in social protection programming.
