Even by rural Ugandan standards, Besweri Bukenya and Eseli Nambi’s house looks basic. The small, tin-roofed, mud-and-wattle structure only stands out because of the freshness of the red earth.



But for this couple in Baakijjulula village, in the Kiboga district of central Uganda, the modest house is a blessing. It was built with savings from the senior citizens’ grants that the government gives to vulnerable Ugandans with assistance from Irish Aid and the UK Department for International Development.

“The other house was very weak,” Bukenya, 82, said of his old hut. “It was leaking and about to collapse but I had no energy to cut trees to repair it.”



His wife, Eseli, said that before the couple started receiving the monthly grant of 25,000 Ugandan shillings (£5.60) each, life had been difficult. “We had no money to spend,” she said. “The house was very weak. It leaked when it rained. This one is very good. We are now OK.”

The Bukenyas, who have no children, are among more than 150,000 Ugandans aged over 65 receiving cash grants from the government’s expanding social protection programme (ESP). After a pilot deployment in 15 districts, the programme is being extended to include 40 districts over five years.

When the project launched in 2010, many people were sceptical; the £5.60 monthly grant per household was seen as too little. However, evidence suggests the small amounts are having a big impact. If stands up on a larger scale, the ESP could go a long way to answering questions about how to address extreme poverty and vulnerability, especially in rural Uganda.

The challenge is enormous. According to official figures, barely one in 10 Ugandans is covered by a formal pension. The rest rely on their extended family in old age, but deaths from diseases are threatening this support system and leaving many older people with grandchildren to fend for.

For decades, the case for cash handouts to mitigate vulnerability among older people was a difficult one to make as governments moved to cut spending by rolling back the remnants of the welfare state inherited at independence.

But as extreme household poverty became a blemish on the record of a government that boasted of 7% annual growth rates, the opposition took it up as a campaign issue, prompting President Yoweri Museveni to act.

According to Stephen Kasaija, director of the ESP, the money is intended to help older people who are too vulnerable to benefit from existing programmes. Even if education is free, for example, a child will be unable to attend school if his family cannot provide clothing or the books he needs, he said.

Kasaija said the pilot phase had demonstrated that social protection grants can reduce vulnerability. “People who used to have one meal a day say they can have three meals a day … the quality of the food has improved, as they buy more nutritious foods.”

Bukenya’s experience bears this out. He said that when the money started arriving, he bought food so he could eat at least two meals a day. Then he bought a shirt and trousers “because I had hardly anything to wear”.

Some recipients have used the small amounts to invest, either by starting micro-businesses or by forming saving groups that enable members to access money for building, buying chickens, goats or cows, and opening up farm land.



“The experience on the ground is that, for those who have more income, 25,000 shillings means nothing. But for these people who have very little, 25,000 means a lot,” Kasaija said.

However, Fred Muhumuza, a Ugandan economist, said this positive appraisal tells us more about the extent of poverty than the value of the cash transfers.



“If you are giving it to very poor people, anything is welcome … and they will talk positively about it,” he said. “If you compare [this] to where you would want them to be, they are still not there; you want that if that person falls sick, they should be able to go to a clinic and get treatment, be able to buy a shirt or other clothes, and live with dignity in old age.”

Uganda’s experience is consistent with findings in other African countries that have rolled out pensions and other cash transfers. According to a 2013 World Bank report, Reducing Poverty and Investing in People: The New Role of Safety Nets in Africa, in countries such as Swaziland, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Ghana, vulnerability grants targeting specific groups led to improved nutrition and use of social services such as education and health, as well as greater household productivity.

“In Kenya and Malawi, cash transfers led to increased investment in agricultural assets, including crop implements and livestock,” said the report. “Moreover, both programmes fostered increased food consumption and improved dietary diversity, with greater share of household consumption acquired from own-farm production.”



As more evidence emerges that cash grants can make an impact, it is still not known how sustainable they are. South Africa, where everyone over 60 and below a certain income/asset threshold gets an old-age pension under a system inherited from the apartheid era is an exception. In most sub-Saharan African countries – such as Uganda – cash transfers have been entirely or in part funded by donors, prompting the question: what happens if the donors pull out?

The World Bank estimates that social protection grants could cost as little as 2% or 3% of GDP of countries like Uganda. But some ask whether African governments are committed to social protection. Muhumuza points out the Ugandan government is already struggling to pay teachers and medical workers.

“Once the donors pull out, [ESP] will be a shaky thing and will probably have to wind up, or it will begin to default. I don’t see the government of Uganda [consistently] finding that much money,” Muhumuza said.

Pius Bigirimana, the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development, said in a recent interview that the government was committed to social protection as a broad empowerment strategy. He said senior citizens’ grants had been budgeted for in the current financial year and would remain in the budget for years to come.