Financial and in-kind support to the Kayes region of Mali | FAO

Mali has become the latest country in Africa’s Sahel region to be included in FAO’s Cash+ productive transfer programme. Cash+ flexibly combines unconditional cash transfers, which help recipients meet basic household income and protect assets from depletion and loss, with in-kind productive asset transfers. The programme also provides technical training to help highly vulnerable, poor and food-insecure households improve their livelihoods and production capacity.

FAO’s expertise is crucial in deciding on the right mix of complementary interventions, or “add-ons,” combined with cash transfers. Understanding livestock and agricultural seasons helps determine when is the best time to move ruminants and animal feed, and provide appropriate technical training to participants. The right access to this type of productive assistance helps kick-start a virtuous cycle of income generation that leads to economic empowerment, increased asset ownership, improved food security and dietary diversity.

In Mali, CASH+ has focused particularly on rural areas, where two different types of grants with similar total value are being distributed and compared. The first grant consists of 20,000 CFA francs (about 32 USD) in cash, one male goat, two female goats and 50 kg of animal feed. This combination is distributed to 375 beneficiary families, about 2,650 people. The second grant involves cash payments only, distributed in two batches of 50,000 CFA francs (about 82 USD) each. This is also distributed to 375 families.

The two different transfer modalities allow FAO to analyse in detail their respective impacts on food security, nutrition, income and asset ownership, and to compare the cost-effectiveness of pure cash transfers versus cash transfers linked to productive assets.

Women-centered
99% of CASH+ grants go directly to vulnerable women, who often have large families and need to protect their livelihoods, diversify their income sources and build productive assets to cope with recurring crises such as drought, desertification, floods, conflict, economic shocks and disease.

Since her husband left, project participant Nouhan Dicko has had to raise her five children alone. Before receiving CASH+ transfers, her only source of income was selling zèguènè (a wild fruit picked from the bush) at the Nioro market, more than 10 kilometers from her village. Now, Nouhan is delighted: “With the money I received, I bought two bags of rice! I hope my goats will give birth soon.”

Sira Diatta spent two years relying on her village neighbors to provide food for her and her ten children. With her husband seriously ill and her fields abandoned, life was extremely difficult. Cash+ came at the right time for her. “I’m happy to be out of this difficult period,” she says. “The small livestock will make me more independent.”

Nohan and Silas are just two of many women who have benefited from cash transfers, public works programmes, health insurance and other social protection mechanisms.

CASH+ in the Sahel
Since 2014, FAO’s CASH+ programme has played an important role in helping vulnerable groups in the Sahel region to build resilient livelihoods.

In southern Mauritania, CASH+ helps GenjihaA single mother of nine children, she started a small business with the money she needed to pay for her family’s food and medical expenses, pay for school fees, and further develop her food stand; in Burkina Faso, the program helped beneficiaries increase their income by 27%, increased the number of food secure participants from 35% to 75%, and improved dietary diversity; in Niger, CASH+ demonstrated its applicability in crisis, recovery, and development contexts.

So far, the results in Mali look similarly positive, but further analysis should provide evidence as to which of the two transfer approaches may be more effective in the long run.