In the Sahel, shocks are often recurrent and overlapping, requiring responses that can anticipate risks and move quickly to prevent households from falling deeper into poverty. Shock‑responsive national adaptive social protection (ASP) systems make this possible, by scaling support as needed and adapting delivery through pre‑agreed programs, contingency plans, risk‑based triggers, and financing. Furthermore, in fragile and conflict‑affected contexts — where shocks and insecurity are intertwined — additional adaptations are required to ensure reliable access in insecure environments. Under fiscal constraints, government leadership is essential to align humanitarian and development partners around national ASP systems for more coordinated, timely, and cost-efficient support.
Sahel Adaptive Social Protection Program
Responding to Shocks and FCV Contexts with National ASP Systems
© Curt Carnemark / World Bank
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Building programs, delivery systems, triggers, coordination mechanisms, and financing so governments act fast and prevent irremediable losses
For ASP shock-response interventions to reach those affected by shocks reliably and quickly, multiple elements need to be in place before shocks hit: an ASP program that is ready to scale up and deliver benefits to affected households, a contingency plan that provides the mandate for the ASP program to respond, a trigger or pre-agreed activation protocol that defines when a response is launched, and pre-arranged financing instruments that ensure resources are available to pay for the response.
ASP shock-response intervention. SASPP supported the design of shock-responsive programs that enable governments to scale up quickly and efficiently, both vertically (providing more support to existing beneficiaries) and horizontally (providing support to new additional beneficiaries). Importantly, for large-scale responses to be deployed in a timely and cost-effective manner, ASP delivery mechanisms need to be shock-ready before shocks hit. To this end, SASPP supports the development of targeting mechanisms to identify households likely to be impacted by shocks (using more dynamic registries) and of payment systems that have the capacity to expand rapidly. During its Phase 2, SASPP has supported various shock-response interventions, reaching over 1.26 million people, half of which were women.
Contingency plans. When a shock is identified and a response is decided, it is important for all actors involved to know who does what, when, and how. Clear pre-agreed rules promote rapid action and coordination, including for ASP responses. At the institutional level, this calls for a government-led mechanism to bring all partners—including humanitarian actors—to participate in a single decision-making process. Actors are then encouraged to progressively align around shared programs and systems, as for examples in the case of Mauritania. Transparent, rules-based systems build accountability and trust: pre-agreed triggers, objective data, and clear protocols reduce the risk of politicized allocation, ad-hoc decisions, or unequal treatment during crises, thereby boosting trust in national institutions.
Triggers. Evidence underscores the value of early intervention. Trigger mechanisms—pre-defined, objective thresholds typically derived from weather early warning systems and other data—enable faster response to shocks. In Niger, for example, satellite-based drought triggers were used for an early response, with larger impacts on food consumption, food security and mental well-being than the traditional later response. Designing such triggers requires a deep understanding of local shock patterns, as illustrated by a study of flood risks in Chad. In the Sahel, governments often rely on the Cadre Harmonisé—a semi-annual, field-based food insecurity assessment—to respond to food insecurity. Satellite imagery and other early warning data, sometimes available even before a shock occurs, can prove useful to ensure faster responses to shocks such as droughts, floods, or displacement.
Pre-arranged financing. Ideally, financing should be available before shocks hit, to ensure resources are available immediately when needed for an ASP shock-response. Financing mechanisms can take many forms, including contingency funds, budget lines, and risk-transfer instruments, though the relevance of different instruments will vary with the risk profile of the country. Disaster risk financing diagnostics, conducted in collaboration with the Centre for Disaster Protection (CDP), highlight gaps in existing disaster risk financing instruments that need to be addressed in Burkina Faso, Chad, and Mali. In Mauritania, the FNRCAN is an innovative system which promotes predictable financing by providing a trusted national system for various actors to pool resources ahead of shocks. Climate funds could also accelerate their support to the poorest and most vulnerable in the Sahel by using ASP mechanisms to channel resources (see this global guidance note and the section on climate resilience under our Welfare, Resilience, and Social Cohesion page).
Last Updated: Feb 28, 2026
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ASP has demonstrated its capacity to deliver strong impacts, even in fragile and conflict-affected contexts
Adaptive social protection is one of the most strategic investments for national and international actors operating in fragile settings. By 2030, up to two-thirds of the world’s extreme poor will live in countries affected by fragility, conflict, and violence (FCV), and ASP programs can yield strong impacts in such contexts. Qualitative evidence from Burkina Faso and Cameroon highlight how refugees consistently describe how safety nets help them regain material stability even when conflict limits longer-term planning. Beyond support to those groups, ASP systems and programs can also help build or preserve trust and social cohesion, which can be eroded by forced displacement. At the global level, ASP has demonstrated its potential for improved economic, social and political outcomes. Overall, evidence from FCV contexts in the Sahel confirms strong impacts on well-being, on economic inclusion, and on human capital.
Operating in fragile and conflict-affected settings requires more than business as usual. Insecurity, weak governance, forced displacement, limited basic social infrastructure, and limited access to markets can disrupt ASP delivery. These constraints have driven important innovations in how ASP operates in the Sahel to maximize its impacts. Our recent report on Delivering Safety Nets in FCV Contexts Guidebook (2025) consolidates practical guidance to ensure ASP remains effective through crises while the global World Bank approach paper Planting Roots in Shifting Soil provides a framework for FCV settings. Strategies range from adjusting program design to evolving situations and ensuring social registries allow rapid responses to shocks, to introducing flexible payment mechanisms and partnering with local actors where government access is limited. For example:
- In Burkina Faso, a shift was made to more secure digital payments, involving the distribution of mobile phones, and accompanying measures on good practices around nutrition and economic inclusion were delivered via voice messages.
- In Chad, a review on challenges and options identified capacity constraints (including a shortage of qualified personnel, limited staff availability, and high turnover) and institutional instability as key constraints for system development.
- In Mali, key lessons were extracted from the implementation of the national safety net program, including the need to prioritize simplicity in design and adopt a gradual approach to expansion, to invest in preparedness and contingency planning from the start, and to manage ownership and visibility in fragile contexts.
- Experience from Burkina Faso and Cameroon underscores the need to incorporating flexibility into program objectives, anticipating the need to adapt programs to changing security environments, as well as making deliberate efforts to design programs that strengthen social cohesion, amongst other things.
To address specific contexts of forced displacement, key parameters of ASP programs and systems need to be adjusted. Recognizing the hardships faced by both displaced and host communities, programs need to be designed to ensure fair and equitable support. In Chad, for instance, the SASPP-supported government program allocated around 70 percent of support to host communities and 30 percent to refugees. It was designed to promote positive interactions among the groups through shared health and education facilities. Adapting ASP to forced mobility in FCV contexts requires an understanding of when and how people move, how communities absorb newcomers, and how support interacts with fragile local systems.
Last Updated: Feb 28, 2026
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Government leadership and partner coordination around national ASP systems are critical to address the Sahel's vulnerability to shocks more efficiently and cost-effectively
Because ASP can be harnessed to address both chronic conditions and temporary needs, it provides an opportunity for humanitarian and development actors to converge and better coordinate, over time reducing the need for ad-hoc support. In the Sahel, humanitarian and government-led programs are increasingly operating side by side. Humanitarian assistance typically focuses on emergencies and short-term relief, while national social protection systems aim to provide more predictable, longer-term support to reduce structural poverty and the drivers of fragility, and to boost economic inclusion, productivity and diversification. When working together, both share an important goal: to protect vulnerable households and build their resilience to protracted crises, whether political, economic, conflict, or climate-induced.
As compounded crises put pressure on public budgets, development resources, and humanitarian funds, combining approaches has become essential. ASP can serve as a mechanism to better serve both relief and development objectives, by combining regular support that builds resilience with shock-responsive mechanisms that act quickly in times of shocks. When humanitarian and development actors converge towards government ASP systems, they can leverage foundational government ASP systems to jointly plan interventions under national leadership, minimizing duplication and optimizing the use of limited fiscal space.
But how is this done in practice? In 2023, SASPP published a Policy Note based on six country case studies, summarizing findings from a SASPP flagship report on linking humanitarian cash assistance and national social protection systems, and capturing how convergence exists on a spectrum, from complete separation to full integration (depending on each country’s context and institutional maturity). In Mauritania, the government has deployed strong ASP instruments – social registry, payment mechanism, safety net program – which have progressively been adopted by humanitarian actors to channel their support, resulting in an integrated adaptive system that activates coordinated and efficient support in response to predictable stress periods.
The fundamental role of ASP systems in bringing together both types of interventions has increasingly been recognized as central to the Humanitarian-Development Nexus (see Social Protection for Stability: A Catalytic Agenda recently adopted by a high-level panel on the matter). It is particularly important in the Sahel, where frequent shocks combine with contexts of fragility and conflict resulting in protracted crises which compound chronic poverty and vulnerability.
Over time, expanded ASP coverage contributes to greater resilience to shocks, which can reduce humanitarian financing needs. First, as households increase their resilience, their capacity to cope with shocks increase, and the need for shock-response diminishes, even with shocks of a similar scale. Second, by leveraging existing instruments, governments can respond more quickly and at a lower cost than through ad-hoc mechanisms established during crises. Over time, as resilience increases and a greater number of shock-responses are handled through national systems, the residual need for humanitarian response is expected to decline, enabling a gradual shift from repeated short-term responses towards more sustainable support and lower overall system costs.
Source: Adapted from graphic made by joint partnership of UNICEF/WFP/WB
Convergence is not automatic, and advancing alignment requires sustained commitment, open dialogue, and practical entry points. SASPP and key partners such as UNICEF and WFP are deliberatively advancing this agenda with governments and other partners through joint activities and a strong partnership, led by shared convergence principles in the region. At the country level, collaboration platforms were established in countries such as Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger to collaborate on specific initiatives and align with government priorities. At the practical level, entry points often include shared payment systems, social registries or outreach platforms, where collaboration is most feasible. These efforts reinforce a shared vision: adaptive social protection is a strategic and stabilizing investment; one that can reduce costs, strengthen government legitimacy, and offer people continuity, dignity and the ability to rebuild their lives during and after times of crisis.
Last Updated: Feb 28, 2026