The Governance of Social Protection Programmes for Poverty Alleviation in Middle-Income Economies in Africa: The Case of Botswana

Social Protection Programmes

Abstract

This paper aimed to explore the governance of social protection programmes for Poverty Alleviation in Middle-Income Economies in Africa. This study adopted an explorative qualitative case study design that draws from document analysis to examine the various governance strategies implemented by the Government of Botswana to assess the efficacy of the social protection programmes in alleviating poverty, vulnerability, and inequalities. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data gathered. The data was presented in the form of themes and subthemes. The findings reveal that although vulnerable groups have benefited from government social protection programmes, the wealth of the country is still unequally distributed, hence poverty is still persistent. Furthermore,  the governance strategies adopted include stakeholder engagement, public awareness, legislative frameworks, and Department of Social Development monitoring and evaluation strategies. Moreover, the findings indicate that Botswana's social protection programmes frequently struggle from inadequate coordination as they are being implemented under different government administrative structures. In addition, the government is facing capacity limitations as the social workers are overburdened with addressing various social development challenges. Drawing from the assertion above, it is difficult to assess the effectiveness of social protection programmes because there are no recent statistics which show how much was invested by the government and the recipient’s level of satisfaction is not documented. The conclusions drawn from the paper show several caveats that call for the increased role of the government to implement more transparent social protection measures to address structural inequalities and promote citizen empowerment.