QuIP evaluation of the effectiveness of the Social Cash Transfer programme in urban Zambia
| 13 May 2025 | News
This is a guest post about a recent QuIP evaluation by UNICEF, authored by Silvia Storchi, Joseph Mumba Zulu, Mathilde Van Drooghenbroeck, Thibault Uytterhaegen (UNICEF Innocenti – Global Office of Research and Foresight) and Adam Silumbwe (School of Public Health, University of Zambia), cross-posted with kind permission from socialprotection.org. The study was conducted in collaboration with UNICEF Zambia and the Zambia Ministry of Community Development and Social Services (MCDSS).
The Social Cash Transfer (SCT) programme is Zambia’s largest and most significant social protection initiative aimed at reducing poverty. Designed to address extreme poverty and break its cycle across generations, the programme targets five categories of vulnerable households and delivers cash payments every two months. Initially launched in rural areas, the SCT was extended to urban settings in 2016, maintaining the same core features. As part of the Transfer Project research programme, a qualitative study was conducted to evaluate the programme’s effectiveness in urban areas.
The Social Cash Transfer programme
Launched in rural areas in 2003 in response to growing vulnerability and persistently high poverty levels, the Social Cash Transfer (SCT) programme was extended to urban settings in 2016, and it has now become a key component of Zambia’s social protection system. As of August 2024, the programme had reached almost 1.3 million recipient households, 40 per cent of whom living in urban areas. The programme supports five categories of vulnerable households: at the time of study, female-headed households with at least three children under 19 and households with a person with severe disability) constituted about 80 per cent of the beneficiaries. The remaining 20 per cent of recipient households fell under the three categories of households with those with an elderly person (60 years or older), someone who is chronically ill and receiving palliative care, and child-headed households (where the head is under 19 and unmarried).
The SCT programme aims to achieve the following four core outcomes:
(i) enhanced food security,
(ii) reduced child mortality and morbidity,
(iii) increased enrolment and attendance in primary education, and
(iv) greater asset ownership among vulnerable households.
Cash payments are made every two months, with ZMW 800 provided to households with a person with a disability, and ZMW 400 to households in the other eligible categories.
Photo credit: © UNICEF/Jason J Mulikita
The research
Most of the existing evidence on Zambia’s Social Cash Transfer (SCT) programme comes from rural settings. To fill this gap, the study focused on understanding how the programme works in urban areas. First, the research sought to better understand how the lives of programme beneficiaries changed in the two years from 2022 to 2023 as a result of the programme. The study explored changes in several domains such as household food consumption, children’s health, children’s education, household income sources and assets, community relationships, overall well-being and hope for the future. In addition, the research investigated beneficiaries’ perceptions of the drivers of these changes.
Secondly, the study examined the specific urban pathways of change and how the programme worked differently for beneficiaries in urban and rural areas, by looking at the pathways of change in different urban settings.
The study employed the Qualitative Impact Protocol (QuIP) approach, a research method designed to explore the pathways of change and the causal mechanisms behind those changes. This method collects data directly from the intervention’s intended beneficiaries, using their narrative accounts to assess changes in specific domains and determine the programme’s contribution to those changes. To mitigate pro-project and confirmation bias, independent field researchers, who had no knowledge of the intervention being evaluated, gathered the narrative data. This “blindfolding” approach was also applied to the respondents.
The study used a two-stage purposive sampling strategy: (i) four study locations were selected, and (ii) the two largest categories of cash transfer beneficiaries were sampled. Data collection took place in June and July 2024 across two urban locations (Lusaka and Kitwe), one peri-urban area (Solwezi), and one rural area (Rufunsa). In total, 96 recipients from female-headed households and households with a person with a disability were interviewed, with an equal distribution across the four locations. Participants were asked to narrate changes in different domains of their lives during the two years prior to the study (2022 and 2023).
Key findings
Positive impacts, but undermined by external shocks
Overall, the study found that social cash transfers had positive and protective effects in several domains explored, including food consumption, income, child health, education, and household assets. Notably, during a period marked by external shocks such as rising inflation and one of the worst droughts in the country’s history, cash transfers had a protective effect on the livelihoods of many recipients, preventing them from sliding further into poverty. These protective effects of social cash transfers were observed across various sectors, with respondents using the cash transfer to buy food, purchase school necessities (e.g., shoes and uniforms), access medical services (e.g., covering transport costs), buy medication, and even start new businesses. The SCT programme also supported resilience in existing businesses and households, enabling many to retain their assets rather than selling them to cope with the financial strain caused by inflation and drought.
However, the study also highlighted that, in many cases, receiving the social cash transfer was insufficient to fully offset the negative impacts of rising inflation, increased food prices, and drought. These challenges were particularly evident in three domains: food consumption, household income, and the ability to meet basic needs such as hygiene products, bedding, and clothing. Over the recall period, 54% of respondents reported a decrease in food consumption, 24% saw a reduction in household income, 29% experienced income fluctuations, and 46% reported a decrease in ability to meet household needs. The findings also revealed that negative changes were less frequently reported by respondents in households with a person with a disability, who received the higher cash transfer amount of ZMW 800, compared to those in female-headed households, who received ZMW 400. A higher proportion of the first group reported improvements in food consumption, income, and their ability to meet household needs.
Regional location played a greater role than type of setting
The research also explored differences in pathways across setting types, focusing on two urban areas (Lusaka and Kitwe), one peri-urban area (Solwezi), and one rural area (Rufunsa). However, the findings revealed that location-based (urban/peri-urban/rural) differences were less significant than the contrasts between the two districts in central Zambia (Lusaka and Rufunsa) and the two in northern Zambia (Kitwe and Solwezi).
Specifically, the study found that Kitwe and Solwezi, both rising mining towns, were less impacted by external shocks like inflation and drought compared to the capital of Lusaka and the rural area of Rufunsa, which is easily accessible from the capital city. The perceived causal pathways to food consumption, income, and hope for the future varied between the central and northern regions, with Kitwe and Solwezi having the best outcomes in terms of both quantity and diversity of food, the smallest number of respondents reporting a decrease in income and a more positive outlook towards the future compared to respondents from Lusaka and Rufunsa. In contrast, the pathways for children’s health, children’s education, community relationships, and overall well-being showed more similarity across all four study locations.
Conclusions
This study can be located within a strand of literature on social protection programmes in urban areas, which shows that social cash transfer programmes, first designed for rural, must be adapted for replications to urban areas. As initially said, the social protection programme in Zambia was replicated to urban areas with the same features used in rural areas. The findings from this research show that adaptation should be taken into account in Zambia, not necessarily between urban and rural, but rather in response to shocks and emergencies that affect regional locations in different ways.
In particular, the study outlines clear recommendations for strengthening the SCT programme’s effectiveness by integrating economic interventions into the SCT programme to help households convert cash transfers into sustainable income and by adjusting the transfer amounts in response to inflation and climate shocks. Further, the study recommends further research to assess the optimal transfer value based on the beneficiary category, external shocks (e.g., inflation) and programme aims.
For all the study findings and detailed recommendations see the Qualitative Study of the Social Cash Transfer Programme in Urban Zambia | Innocenti Global Office of Research and Foresight
For a summary see the Research brief
Learn more about the Transfer Project
Learn more about the Qualitative Impact Protocol (QuIP)
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