ABSTRACT
Introduction Social protection is now widely considered an important development strategy to reduce poverty and vulnerabilities of poor and marginalized populations and strengthen their coping capacities. In lower income countries where few stateestablished social safety net programs exist, social protection initiatives play a crucial role in reducing vulnerabilities and enhancing capabilities to weather shocks such as hunger, drought, floods, and diseases. Hurrell, Mertens, and Pellerano (2011) describe social protection as programs that are designed to increase coping capabilities and reduce social exclusion in poor countries. In their opinion, social protection can be effective in supporting specific social groups such as reducing gender inequality and inter-generational transmission of poverty. According to the Ghana National Social Protection Strategy (NSPS) office, social protection “consists of a set of formal and informal mechanisms directed towards the provision of social assistance and capacity enhancements to the vulnerable and excluded in society” (Government of Ghana, 2007, p. 8). The NSPS identifies impoverished individuals, households, and communities that lack access to basic social services as target beneficiaries of the government social protection programs. As if in acknowledgment of the failure of its developmental philosophy and neoliberal policy in Africa, the World Bank policy framework in 2002 advised African governments to consider social protection as an investment rather than charity (emphasis added) (Heitzmann, Canagarajah, & Siegel, 2002). Ghana, like many lower income countries, has experienced profound economic, political, and social changes since the end of colonial rule in 1957. The most notable among these changes in the past two decades are market and political liberalization, privatization of government-owned enterprises, devolution of central authority and planning to district assemblies, and globalization, all of which were part of the International Financial Institutions’ Structural Adjustment Programs. As Heitzmann et al. (2002) rightly point out, such changes brought significant stress on social arrangements that have traditionally served as informal safety nets. Similarly, the economic restructuring instigated by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF ) mandated cutbacks on
government expenditure that directly affected formal social safety net programs including health care, education, and agriculture, thereby elevating the risks of many poor households’ inability to cope with these changes. This chapter will review social protection programs in Ghana within the context of the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) and its complimentary programs including the National Health Insurance Scheme and the Education Capitation Grant. We examine the prospects as well as challenges of these programs within the framework of the government’s national social protection strategy.
