Building Resilience Ethiopia (BRE)

The Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) in Ethiopia was set up in 2005 by the government as part of a strategy to address chronic food insecurity. The PSNP provides cash or food to people who have predictable food needs in a way that enables them to improve their own livelihoods and therefore become more resilient to the effects of shocks in the future. However, there are times when a shock results in transitory food insecurity, the scale of which is beyond the mainstream PSNP to address. For it to function correctly, effective early warning systems need to be in place to indicate the need for a response as early as possible. CHC is partnering with Oxford Policy Management to develop an action plan to improve the integration of nutrition into early warning systems (EWS) to inform the scale up of the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) and Humanitarian Food Assistance (HFA) in Ethiopia. This will result in the better management of malnutrition in response to shocks. The action plan will have a strong emphasis on the potential role of nutrition information in strengthening early warning and nutrition sensitive approaches in the scale up of the PSNP and HFA. This action plan will be informed by a desk review of global good practices and developed in consultation with key stakeholders at federal and regional levels. The desk review along with a first phase of key informant interviews will lead to the development of an options paper which will be “pressure tested” during workshops with stakeholders from the different levels in Ethiopia. The consultative workshops should lead to the mutual identification of actions and approaches that need to be adopted and ensure a high level of buy in, consensus and ownership amongst Ethiopia’s PSNP, HFA and EWS stakeholders. Read more