In order to tackle poverty and inequality across Rwanda, the government has elaborated a national social protection strategy in 2011. It is a sectorial strategy of national scope that aims to establish a social protection system that complements and contributes to economic growth of Rwanda by 2020.; The global objective of the social protection sector is to build a social protection system that tackles poverty and inequality, enables the poor to move out of poverty, helps reduce vulnerability and protect people from shocks, helps improve health and education among all Rwandans, and contributes to economic growth.; The specific objectives of the Sector over the next five fiscal years (2011-2016) are: (i) harmonize and coordinate different interventions to respond to the needs of the poor and vulnerable, (ii) build on and extend existing cash transfer programmes, (iii) extend access to public services to the poorest households, (iv) begin to extend contributory social security mechanisms, (v) deliver complementary programmes to assist households to graduate, (vi) build leadership and capacity across government on social protection and strengthen the alignment of non-governmental actors with national priorities, and (vii) strengthen systems and structures for delivery of social protection.; In order to make agriculture, forestry and fisheries more productive and sustainable, the strategy envisages that, the Ministry of Agriculture will continue with its programmes to provide essential inputs to poor households. Key programmes will include: (i) Girinka, the One Cow one Family programme, which provides poor families with more than 0.7 hectares of land with a cow. The first-born off-spring should be passed to another programme, (ii) poor households with less than 0.7 hectares will increasingly have access to programmes that provide them with small animals, such as goats, rabbits and chickens, (iii) the practice of subsidising fertilizer inputs will continue.; Regarding the reduction of the rural poverty, the strategy plans to take a range of social development initiatives to support social protection forward by the Ministry in charge of Social Welfare, other ministries and institutions in the social protection sector. These will focus on helping poor households move out of poverty while also building community cohesion. The programmes to be prioritised by MINALOC are the VUP Financial Services programme, support for income generation programmes among genocide survivors, and the continuation of the Ubudehe priority community interventions programme. These programmes are part of and contribute to broader national initiatives across government and the private sector, focused on strengthening cooperatives, SACCOs and increasing access to financial services and income generating opportunities in Rwanda.; To increase the resilience of livelihoods to threats and crises, the strategy plans the following outcome: (i) the social protection systems are complemented and strengthened by risk mitigation and rapid response systems, (ii) effective early warning systems in place to indicate the need for a response as early as possible, (iii) contingency plans in place so that when a shock is indicated key actors in the system have already thought through how they need to respond, (iv) contingent financing resources need to be ready and available to avoid negative consequences of a delayed response and (v) adequate institutional arrangements and capacity in place or able to be put in place quickly to allow the pre-prepared plans to be implemented.; In the context of governance, the implementation of the strategy will be led by the Ministry in charge of social protection, in close collaboration with other Ministries, local government, para-statals, development partners and civil society. There will be three components to the Strategy’s monitoring and evaluation programme with are: regular monitoring, measuring the success of the strategy and impact evaluation.
National Social Protection Strategy