Poverty Reduction and Social Protection

Mandate

To coordinate and provide policy guidance on social support and poverty reduction programmes to achieve sustainable national development.

Objective

To ensure poverty is reduced and the poor are able to move out of poverty and vulnerability through:

  • Strengthened policy guidance and implementation standards and guidelines of poverty reduction and social support programmes.
  • Enhanced Capacity Development in Poverty Reduction and Social Protection
  • Establishment of Social Support Fund (SSF) from the Multi Donor Trust Fund (MDTF)
  • Institutionalisation of the Unified Beneficiary Registry (UBR) for all Social Support Programmes.

Functions

The overall key responsibility of the division is to coordinate the design, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation of social support programs, policies, and poverty reduction interventions.

The division has two sections namely Poverty Reduction and Social Protection with the following distinct functions:

i) Poverty Reduction:

  • Facilitate the process of mobilizing resources for poverty reduction programmes.
  • Coordinate the implementation and management of the Unified Beneficiary Registry.
  • Coordinate poverty related activities in conjunction with other stakeholders.
  • Facilitate Poverty and Social Impact Assessments on key reforms that affect the poor and vulnerable segments of the society.
  • Conduct Social Impact assessments on key reforms that affect the poor and vulnerable segments of the society.
  • Conduct poverty analysis in relation to prevailing development and economic policies.
  • Coordinate the dissemination of poverty analysis results with relevant stakeholders.
  • Facilitate and advocate the incorporation of poverty and inequality measures in program design.
  • Coordinate the implementation and management of the Unified Beneficiary Registry.
  • Coordinate poverty related activities in conjunction with other stakeholders.
  • Facilitate Poverty and Social Impact Assessments on key reforms that affect the poor and vulnerable segments of the society.
  • Conduct Social Impact assessments on key reforms that affect the poor and vulnerable segments of the society.
  • Conduct poverty analysis in relation to prevailing development and economic policies.

ii) Social Protection

  • Facilitate the process of mobilizing resources for social protection programmes.
  • Coordinate the design, implementation, review, and analysis of social protection programmes and policies.
  • Ensure stakeholders’ adherence to National Social Support Policy.
  • Participate in the formulation of medium- and long-term national development policies and strategies.
  • Facilitate mainstreaming of cross-cutting issues such as gender, HIV/AIDS, nutrition, disaster risk management into the design of social protection.
  • Participate in monitoring and evaluation of social protection programmes in collaboration with the Monitoring and Evaluation Division.
  • Develop, review, and disseminate Social Protection Guidelines.
  • Raise awareness around Social Protection in Malawi.
  • Facilitate process of identifying social protection synergies and linkages.
  • Coordinate the design, implementation, review, and analysis of social protection programmes and policies.

PRSP Documents