📋 Tender Overview
Zimbabwe’s social protection system is characterised by low coverage, poor targeting, weak coordination and high fragmentation, making it inadequate to assist the growing number of poor and vulnerable people. These contributions to the World Bank and UNICEF, two expert organisations on social protection, aim to strengthen the foundational architecture to improve, expand and manage access to social assistance, livelihood support, and resilience services for vulnerable groups.
Country/region Topic Period Budget
Zimbabwe
Inclusive economic Development
Governance
Disaster Risk Reduction
Social protection
Public sector policy
01.12.2024 - 30.11.2028
CHF 7’300’000
The project in brief
Background Zimbabwe faces severe socio-economic challenges, with extreme poverty affecting over 50% of the rural population and approximately 15% of urban dwellers. In the past two decades, the country has endured repeated economic downturns, climate-related shocks and health crises, leading to an increase of the extreme poverty rate from 23% in 2011 to 43% in 2021, and significant multidimensional poverty including deprivations related to health, education and access to basic social services. In this context, effective and shock-responsive social protection is essential for poverty alleviation, and enhancing the resilience and access to services of vulnerable households. Despite a broad consensus on its importance, Zimbabwe’s social protection system remains inadequate, characterised by weak sector coordination, fragmentation, and limited coverage. Establishing a well-functioning social registry, a supportive policy framework, and links to other support systems are critical opportunities to address these challenges and support efficient programme delivery across sectors.
Objectives Provide enhanced access to quality shockresponsive social protection services for poor and vulnerable households. This will ultimately contribute to poverty reduction, climate resilience, and inclusion.
Target groups
An estimated 2-7 million vulnerable individuals that are seasonally food insecure and could be better targeted with shockresponsive social protection
An estimated 95’000 households under the government-run Harmonized Social Cash Transfer (HSCT), that would benefit from better targeting and grievance and redress mechanisms
Government officers, policymakers and implementing authorities
Development partners currently operating with non-harmonised beneficiary lists and targeting approaches
Medium-term outcomes
Improved targeting and coordination of social protection programmes through an established Social Registry
Conducive social protection policy environment, budget allocations, and improved stakeholder coordination
More shock-responsive and accountable national social assistance programmes
Stronger Civil registry system, feeding into the Social Registry
Results Expected results:
Social registry populated with 20% of the population, based on a harmon
