Graduating or Creating Dependent Households? An Evaluation of the Productive Safety Net Program Implemented in Seharti Samre District, Tigray Region, Ethiopia

Abstract

By drawing on evaluation research which was conducted in 2018 with the
objective of assessing the impacts of a Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP)
on beneficiary households in Berezah - a rural community in Tigray regionthis
article presents assessment results with a particular focus on issues of
dependency. The study used a concurrent cross-sectional design; directed
towards evaluating the Program using mixed methods. A stratified simple
random sampling and purposive sampling techniques were used to select 180
and 140 study participants for the quantitative and qualitative components of
the research, respectively. Quantitative data were analysed using descriptive
and inferential statistics while qualitative data were analysed using hematic
analysis. The findings revealed that the PSNP hasn’t brought about economic
empowerment, measured in terms of improving food security and asset
accumulation, among beneficiary households’. Most PSNP beneficiary
households were reported to have spent most of their time working on public
works but lack proactive engagement in off-farm income generating activities.
Moreover, beneficiary households compared to others, had large family size,
purchased less agricultural inputs like artificial fertilizers, had lesser crop
yields and developed higher dependency on the Program. Thus, instead of
protecting asset depletion and enhancing the food security status of
beneficiary households’, the Program produced more dependent households
and this calls for revisiting the PSNP design, its implementation strategies and
monitoring mechanisms, if any.