Targeting social assistance in situations of protracted conflict, displacement or recurrent climate shocks so that it reaches those most in need in a timely and effective manner, and without doing further harm, is a complex technical and political challenge for development and humanitarian actors across government and non-government sectors. Trade-offs involving costs beyond the economic – such as risk of exclusion, and concerns over protection and social cohesion – raise key questions about who to target, how to target or whether to target at all (i.e. through universal coverage or lotteries). While targeting effectiveness is fairly well researched in stable development contexts, there is much less understanding and evidence about what works best in protracted crisis settings.
This paper is one of three country case studies covering Ethiopia, Niger, and Nigeria. Each case study focuses on a specific time period to demonstrate how the challenge of targeting might be approached in situations of protracted crises based on actual historical examples. The objective of this approach is to generate insights on the topic of targeting in a comparative way and by considering vulnerability as a dynamic condition. The case studies will be used to produce a synthesis paper that will bring findings together to draw out general lessons for targeting social assistance in crisis contexts. This case study focuses on the 2012 Sahel drought, which produced a food security emergency in Niger.
Using two years of panel data (2011 and 2014) from either side of the 2012 drought crisis in the Sahel, we analyse who was affected by the shock and how they were impacted. We use the data to model the notional performance of different potential targeting approaches – had they been used at the time – to indicate the types of choices and trade-offs that may be necessary when selecting appropriate targeting criteria for responses to similar crises in the future. Finally, we also consider the status of enabling conditions (such as mobile phone network and electricity coverage) for implementing different targeting approaches in shock-responsive social assistance.
