Sahel Adaptive Social Protection Program

ASP helps match the chronic nature of poverty and vulnerability dynamics in the Sahel with tailored responses

Sahel countries are home to some of the poorest and most vulnerable populations. The region is facing multiple challenges: rapid population growth (population sizes are expected to double by 2045), extremely low levels of human capital, inequality, geographical and climate vulnerability, food insecurity, and fragility. In a region where over 40% of the population already live below the poverty line, shocks such as droughts, food price spikes or conflict can further contribute to poverty persistence, which in turn makes it hard to deal with future shocks.

Poverty compounded by shocks drive sharp fluctuations in welfare and have direct negative impacts on food security, education, and health spending. Sahelian households also experience large seasonal swings in monetary welfare and poverty, even in the absence of climate shocks.  In Burkina Faso, Niger, and Senegal, poverty rates rose by  13.7, 6.6 and 8.1 percentage points respectively during the lean season, even in an above average rainfall year. Households regularly fall below the poverty line at predictable times of the year, but importantly, these variations can be anticipated and addressed.

Poverty and shocks affect men and women differently.  In the Sahel there are significant gaps between women and men, and girls and boys, across economic, social and empowerment dimensions. Inequality and exclusion hinder socioeconomic development and economic growth. Ultimately gender gaps in welfare, education, health and employment opportunities impact the well-being of entire communities and nations.  

ASP in the Sahel offers a unique, transformational approach to reducing poverty. It helps change the trajectory of poor households and individuals by breaking the cycle in which structural poverty and repeated shocks reinforce one another. By combining, preventive, sustained support with early or rapid crisis response, ASP stabilizes household welfare in the short term while enabling longer-term gains in productivity, assets, and human capital with a gender-lens approach.

At the core of ASP are national safety net programs, typically implemented over multiple years. By providing regular income support and activities that promote behavior change, these programs help the poorest households meet their immediate needs while also investing in their future: strengthening human capital, building productive assets, increasing resilience, and improving living conditions. Over time, safety nets offer a springboard, supporting people to build self‑reliance in a sustainable way.

Evidence abounds: In Senegal, social safety nets reduced extreme poverty in rural settings by 5 percentage points in only three years (2016-2019). In Chad, the probability of a household often going a day without food has been reduced by 38% thanks to social safety nets. In Mali, 18 months after the end of the safety net program, participants were 57% more likely to save and 46% were more likely to invest in productive assets than non-participants. ASP helps promote more effective income generating activities, while also supporting investments in health, nutrition, education, and the knowledge and skills of the young generation.

Understanding the risks households are most likely to face, as well as their chronic conditions, has been critical to guide program design. This includes informing approaches for the targeting of households, shaping the duration and frequency of support, or guiding the content and approaches of accompanying measures provided to beneficiaries. Comparative work supported by SASPP on targeting, for instance, showed that income-based methods were good at identifying households that are chronically poor, but that additional elements can help ensure food-insecure and shock-vulnerable households are also included. Understanding patterns of vulnerability and poverty is also critical to decide what entry and exit strategies can be applied to keep programs responsive to changing household conditions.

Furthermore, adapting ASP programs and systems to the regional dynamic context is also reflected in how ASP can serve mobile populations, an aspect that can improve outcomes for households in the Sahel. In the Sahel, mobility can often be of a more voluntary nature and driven by economic, family, education, or cultural motivations. Indeed, most movements reflect livelihood strategies, such as seasonal labor, pastoralism, or rural-urban transitions, but some is a result of forced displacement and conflict. Recognizing and identifying the needs of populations that move is essential for inclusion and for boosting the impact of ASP on the poor and vulnerable.

Applying a mobility lens to ASP requires reducing programmatic and administrative blind spots that exclude mobile households, including through the social registration process, as well as allowing for benefit portability across locations, and coordination across administrative boundaries. Programs must also adapt content and delivery to mobility realities, for instance, to ensure they can access transfers even when certain members are on the road by using digital payments that remain accessible across locations or tailoring payment dates to prevailing seasonal migration patterns, for instance.

Last Updated: Feb 28, 2026