Towards shock-responsive social protection: lessons from the COVID-19 response in Ethiopia

This report documents the Government of Ethiopia’s social protection response to mitigate some of the negative impacts of COVID-19 on vulnerable populations. It also analyses the factors that enabled and constrained the effectiveness of the response, at the policy and operational levels, and finds that a more extensive and timely response was undermined by a lack of financing and a social protection system that was designed to respond to droughts but was unprepared to respond to a novel type of shock such as COVID-19. Finally, the report provides an assessment of the response in terms of coverage, adequacy, comprehensiveness, timeliness and gender and social inclusion considerations.