This study investigates the challenges and opportunities in coordination between Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP), a programme that provides social assistance to severely poor populations with chronic needs, and which now incorporates elements of shock response, and humanitarian assistance providers.
Coordination is constrained by inadequate budgets, the absence of contingency funds within the PSNP, lack of clearly defined institutional mechanisms to support coordination, ongoing conflict in some areas, and the limited reach of the PSNP in some conflict-affected areas.
The study recommends that coordination in response to acute shocks can be strengthened by building the capacity of the cluster system; promoting the availability of contingency budgets at lower political-administrative levels, particularly at woreda (district) level; investing in anticipatory actions and adaptive acute shock responses; and mainstreaming disaster risk management systems in the structures of relevant state ministries.
