UNRISD Director, Thandika Mkandawire, will take part in a seminar entitled “Social Protection: Cash Transfer and Social Benefits in Africa” on 2 February 2009 at the Institute for Future Studies in Stockholm, Sweden.
Recently, interest in new social protection mechanisms using social transfers as pilots and in some cases as scaled up national schemes has been growing across Africa fuelled, in part, by persistent high rates of poverty and malnutrition. At regional level, the Africa Union has taken a lead formulating a social policy framework and called for the next generation of poverty reduction strategies to better reflect social protection issues in setting national priorities, particularly as Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have proven difficult to reach in many countries. Along with that, in 2008 an African civil society platform has been formed to advance the social protection agenda in Africa, with participation of various organizations represented in Sweden.
Co-organised by the Institute for Future Studies, Nordic Africa Institute, Save the Children and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), this seminar aims to create an opportunity for researchers and policy makers of government agencies and civil society organizations to get an update on each others’ activities in relation to this agenda. The seminar will be organized around three panels made up of civil society organizations, researchers and government agencies.
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