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In the Sahel subregion, which extends over Central and Western Africa, low labor productivity poses a challenge to poverty reduction, economic growth, and social stability. Social Safety Net Projects target the poorest households who derive their livelihoods from low-productivity activities. As such, they have the potential to improve labor productivity. As part of the Sahel adaptive social protection program (ASPP), the World Bank supports the design and implementation of productive accompanying measures for safety nets beneficiaries. This report sets out the results of a qualitative assessment of the constraints to productive employment that was conducted in the Social Safety Net Project areas, across five of the six countries covered by the ASPP: Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Senegal, and Chad. This assessment identified the main challenges to productivity growth in farm and nonfarm sectors and, jointly with other surveys and local and regional consultations, helped define accompanying measures to safety nets programs aimed at increasing current employment productivity and generating more productive jobs.

Employment and Unemployment --- Labor Markets --- Social Protections and Labor

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This paper analyzes a four-arm randomized evaluation of a multi-faceted economic inclusion intervention delivered by the Government of Niger to female beneficiaries of a national cash transfer program. All three treatment arms include a core package of group savings promotion, coaching, and entrepreneurship training, in addition to the regular cash transfers from the national program. The first variant also includes a lump-sum cash grant and is similar to a traditional graduation intervention ("capital" package). The second variant substitutes the cash grant with psychosocial interventions ("psychosocial" package). The third variant includes the cash grant and the psychosocial interventions ("full" package). The control group only receives the regular cash transfers from the national program. All three treatments generate large impacts on consumption and food security six and 18 months post-intervention. They increase participation and profits in women-led off-farm business and livestock activities, as well as improve various dimensions of psychosocial well-being. The impacts tend to be larger in the full treatment, followed by the capital and psychosocial treatments. Consumption impacts up to 18 months after the intervention already exceed costs in the psychosocial package (the benefit-cost ratio for the psychosocial package is 126 percent; full package, 95 percent; and capital package, 58 percent). These results highlight the value of addressing psychosocial constraints as well as capital constraints in government-implemented poverty reduction programs.

Africa Gender Policy --- Cash Grant --- Economic Inclusion --- Field Experiment --- Gender Innovation Lab --- Graduation --- Livelihoods --- Living Standards --- Poverty --- Poverty Reduction --- Psychosocial --- Services and Transfers to Poor --- Social Protections and Assistance --- Social Protections and Labor