Background
Mali has experienced persistent conflict and regional insecurity since 2012. Multi crises, such as persistent fragility, instability, and economic weakness, have hindered development and weakened the social contract. The country’s large geographical area and challenging terrain have made it more difficult to provide basic services evenly, while climate change has increased the risks and economic challenges faced by agricultural and pastoral communities, contributing to ongoing tensions between groups within society.
Mali is a fragile, semiarid, landlocked, low-income country with a predominantly rural economy and a rapidly growing population. Agriculture is the largest sector in the economy but faces severe challenges from climate change and increasing human pressure. Food insecurity is pervasive: each year, since 2012, approximately 3 million people are food insecure during the lean season. The analysis from the Cadre Harmonisé indicates that persistent insecurity has led to unusual population displacements, loss of property and crops, and theft/kidnapping of livestock in the Center and North of the country. This has resulted in a deterioration of livelihoods, which negatively affects food consumption and means of subsistence in the affected areas. In 2025, more than 4 million people (about 17.15% of the population) are projected to face food insecurity due to climate change, conflict, and restricted access to farmland and flooding.
Malian households are highly exposed to both covariate and idiosyncratic shocks. Climate change is a significant threat to the country’s development and the nutrition and health of its inhabitants, which exacerbate existing food insecurity and often push vulnerable populations into extreme poverty. Severe flooding following torrential rains and devastating river overflows have caused significant material damage (homes, socio-economic infrastructure, etc.), as well as the loss of cultivated areas and numerous animals. As November 2024, 711 cases of flooding had been recorded, affecting 370,567 people.
SASPP Activities
Mali has made significant progress towards the development of Adaptive Social Protection, a sector benefitting from SASPP support. Fiscal year 2025 (FY25, from July 2024 to June 2025) was marked by foundational work in policy, systems, and diagnostics, while the ongoing and planned activities for FY26 will focus on consolidating these gains through implementation, system strengthening, and enhanced coordination for adaptive social protection.
SASPP activities in FY25 focused on building foundations of the adaptive social protection in Mali. Key achievements included conducting awareness-raising workshops on social protection, the Unified Social Registry (RSU), and social safety net programs; through supporting the organization of the national conference on social protection and the first forum of Ministries in charge of humanitarian affairs within the Alliance des États du Sahel space (Mali, Burkina and Niger), as well as supporting the Government in elaborating the new social protection policy (PNPS). SASPP also completed the ASP Stress Test and disseminated its findings.
On the programmatic side, SASPP co-financed the SWEDD+ project of a total of US$75 million, including US$15 million from the SASPP. It will fund productive inclusion activities benefiting poor and vulnerable girls and women in Mali, by providing them with employment opportunities through an integrated set of productive inclusion measures. SASPP also supports the preparation of a new safety net program in collaboration with other partners, including UNICEF and WFP, coordinated by the Government to establish a nationally owned social protection system. Technical support was given for the RSU development plan and operational manual, and discussions continue about the early warning system, including mapping key players and synergies between food security and adaptive social protection.
For FY26, SASPP will continue to build on these foundations through direct investments in productive inclusion activities as well as technical assistance to build the government capacity and to advance policy dialogue on ASP. A key activity will be the implementation of the SWEDD+ project and its productive inclusion measures for poor and vulnerable women Other planned activities include ongoing awareness-raising and policy dialogue, continued support for the elaboration, and adoption of the national social safety net program. The program will also assist in designing a national payment platform and an operational manual that will focus on enhancing interoperability. In the finance area, SASPP support will continue to pursue dialogue on reforming the food security fund and define disbursement rules and triggers for shock-responsive transfers. For data and information, the focus will shift to supporting the implementation of the RSU development plan, finalizing the RSU operational manual, providing technical support for digitalizing historical archives, and strengthening collaboration and training for the early warning system and its data providers.