Evaluation of Emergency Cash Transfer in Zambia

There are times when the government, non-governmental organisations and individuals have to quickly intervene and get emergency aid to people adversely affected by natural and man-made calamities. Zambia has disaster management and social protection plans and programmes to quickly address such events. However, they face administration and financial challenges that sometime overwhelm its constrained resources. Therefore, the support of cooperating partners in disaster management to the government and vulnerable citizens is very important. For example, the emergency cash transfer programme that was implemented by two NGOs and supported by DFID-UK.

Such programmes are monitored and evaluated. The endline evaluation of the project was to assess whether the objectives of setting up the project were met and whether there were lessons from its implementation that could be used in the designing of future projects and programmes. A mixed methods approach that allowed for triangulation of data sources and results was used.

The evaluation concluded that the project was a very relevant intervention, on average effective and efficient.  It also had positive outcomes against the planned project outcome results.  The intervention impacted positively on key dimensions of food security. There were though some areas of management that could have been improved on.

The government of Zambia and its partners used the lessons to improve some of the aspects of its social protection programmes.

Permission was given by the Country Manager in Zambia, Mr Richard Mwape, for Concern Worldwide to the author to write on the DiRECT Programme Evaluation for scholarly purposes.