EC responses to the social consequences of the crisis in Africa

The unit E6 of EuropeAid organised a seminar in Dar-es-Salam from the 5th to the 9th of October on the responses to the social consequences of the food and financial crises in Africa. The seminar gathered about 20 persons from EC delegations, the E6 unit and social transfers experts from UNICEF, RHVP and IDS.

The purpose of the seminar was to exchange on the responses implemented, their impacts and the opportunity to develop perennial safety nets targeting the poor, based on the social transfers experiences implemented through the modality of budget support. The first part of the seminar was dedicated to provide principles and conceptual definition of the approach, including experiences capitalised from EC Food Security Programme interventions. The second part focused on developing a social transfer strategy orientated toward the reduction of undernutrition, from the design to the implementation phase.
The main scopes of the seminar were:

• Update on European Union and European Commission response concerning soaring food and fuel prices and the financial crisis;
• Analysis of the impact of the responses to raising food prices on ongoing programming and formulation exercise and reflection on implementation modalities;
• Consider the implementation of EC counter-cyclical responses to mitigate the social consequences of the crisis and use it as an entry point for enhancing the policy dialogue;
• Explore new opportunities to reallocate existing fiscal resources to pro-poor safety nets and;
• Share lessons learnt from the experiences of the European Commission on social transfers and in particular using the financial modality of budgetary support.