Social Action Fund (MASAF)

Defining principles

Decentralized, grassroots direct employment creation, skill development for poor households, reducing food insecurity, and the production of community assets (2).

Rationale

A response to high levels of poverty and weak economic growth through the 1990s and 2000s (1).

Number of participants

The second round of MASAF 3 funding set a target of benefiting 590,000 households.

Criteria for participation

Workers from households classified as extremely poor and food insecure.

Person-days of employment

Almost 47 million person-days of employment have been generated, temporarily increasing income for more than 2 million households. A typical sub-project employed 200 workers for two weeks (3).

Pay and benefits

No greater than USD 2 per day. This was consistent with the rural minimum wage (4).

Financing

Funding from the World Bank. A total of USD 114M was allocated during the second round of funding for MASAF 3 (5).

Implementation

Overseen by the National Local Government Finance Committee. The latest iteration had three components: the community livelihood support fund, the local authority capacity enhancement fund, and the national institutional strengthening fund (6).

Types of work

Labor-intensive public work projects like the construction of housing for teachers. MASAF three focused on interventions to improve health, education, and food security (7).

Notable features

Almost 40,000 sub-projects have been completed; more than triple the initial target. More than 100,000 km of rural roads have been improved, 18,000 hectares were reforested, more than 5,000 hectares provided with irrigation and drainage, 200 classrooms rehabilitated, and 1,700 homes for teachers were built (8).

Challenges

Corruption was a noted feature of the program’s implementation and was a concern of the Malawi government, and so the program effectively enacted a variety of features and initiatives to mitigate the risk and impact on the program (9).