Publication: Rethinking Poverty Reduction Building an Effective Safety Net in Cameroon
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2025-07-31
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2025-09-09
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This policy note examines the role of social safety nets in addressing persistent poverty and inequality in Cameroon. Building on over a decade of implementation, Cameroon’s main safety nets initiative—the Projet Filets Sociaux (PFS)—has laid important foundations but remains limited in scale and reliant on external financing. Using administrative data and the 2021–2022 ECAM5 household survey, the analysis assesses PFS performance along key dimensions: expenditure, coverage, adequacy, and effectiveness. The findings show that while PFS has reached over 370,000 households, its poverty reduction impact is constrained by fragmented coverage, low benefit levels, and time-bound support. Microsimulations indicate that increasing both the size of transfers and the number of beneficiaries could substantially reduce poverty and help close the gap toward national targets. The note outlines five actionable recommendations to support the development of a national safety nets program: (1) establish a permanent institutional structure, (2) secure predictable financing, (3) expand coverage, (4) improve benefit adequacy, and (5) modernize delivery systems. These reforms would strengthen Cameroon’s ability to protect vulnerable populations, foster economic inclusion, and accelerate progress toward its development goals.
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“Botea, Ioana; Iyengar, Hrishikesh TMM. 2025. Rethinking Poverty Reduction Building an Effective Safety Net in Cameroon. Social Protection and Labor Discussion Paper; No. 2603, July 2025. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/43689 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.”
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Publication Building Results Frameworks for Safety Nets Projects(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-10)Results chains are useful tools to clarify safety nets programs' objectives, verify the program internal logic, and guide the selection of indicators. Although the recent trend has been to focus mostly on outcome indicators, indicators are needed at all levels of the results chain to better understand program performance. Ideally, safety nets performance monitoring systems should build upon reliable program records and be complemented with a combination of tailor?made data sources and national surveys. The latter should be considered not only for monitoring purposes but within a program evaluation agenda. 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