Paper short abstract:

A critical issue faced by all countries developing systems of social protection is how to select beneficiaries. This study examined the process of targeting the beneficiaries of the social protection programmes which provides cash and in-kind transfers interventions in Tanzania.

Paper long abstract:

Nearly 50% of the world population and 17.8% of the African population are at least covered by social protection benefits. In Tanzania, over 5 million people are covered by at least one social protection benefit. Despite its importance, less has been done to understand the processes of targeting beneficiaries and level of participation in such processes by programmes implementing cash and in-kind transfers in Tanzania. This study analyses and discusses data from household survey and in-depth interviews. Results indicate that geographical, proxy means testing and community-based targeting methods are widely implemented. The process of identifying programme beneficiaries is characterized by low community participation, fragmented activities, ad hoc plans, lack of grievance mechanisms, and errors of inclusion and exclusion. To ensure that social protection transfers reach the intended recipients, programmes should seek to adequately reduce factors that compromise the efforts of reaching the poorest and those who are most vulnerable. Community members should widely participate in the process of setting the identification criteria and in the actual process of identifying the beneficiary households. An efficient system for monitoring and graduation of beneficiaries is important to allow re-identification and enrollment of other needy people. These present important issues for designing programmes that aim to target people who are in most need of support in the situation where there is less opportunity for universal programme.