Despite impressive progress on poverty reduction at the national level in Ghana, chronic poverty and livelihood vulnerability persists, especially among small farmers in northern regions. This Briefing Paper reviews social protection mechanisms for addressing vulnerability among Ghanaian farming families, from ‘PAMSCAD’ in the 1980s to the new National Social Protection Strategy (NSPS) and the Livelihoods Empowerment Against Poverty (‘LEAP’) cash transfer programme.
This Briefing Paper was written as a summary of ‘Social Protection and Agriculture in Ghana’, country case study paper prepared for a review commissioned by the FAO on ‘Social Protection and Support to Small Farmer Development’, by Colin Poulton and Ramatu Al Hassan (January 2008). The Ghana case study is published by the Future Agricultures Consortium as Growth & Social Protection Working Paper 04.
