End-line Evaluation For The Rural Poor Stimulus Facility In Malawi

Malawi, just like all other countries in the world, has been badly hit by the COVID-19 pandemic: thus far there have been 88,000 cases of COVID19 and 2,630 deaths. Due to this pandemic, businesses shrunk, and others closed down; and people lost jobs. As a response to the pandemic, GoM closed down all schools, imposed travel bans, provided guidelines for decongesting workplaces and public transport, promoted wearing of masks, testing for COVID-19, frequent washing of hands with soap and continues promoting uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine. GoM also expanded the social protection programme to reduce impacts of the pandemic. IFAD supported the implementation of the Rural Poor Stimulus Facility, a social protection programme that targeted smallholder farmers in 6 districts namely: Balaka, Blantyre, Chiradzulu, Chitipa, Lilongwe and Nkhotakota. Activities implemented in this programme included seed multiplication, procurement, and distribution of seeds, implementing a livestock pass-on programme, facilitating access to markets, provision of extension services and distribution of PPEs. The RPSF programme has come to an end. This rapid assessment was aimed at determining whether the six-core livelihood and well-being indicators were either maintained or improved during the COVID-19 pandemic. PAMCOL obtained ethical approval for the study, recruited Research Assistants, collected the data and produced a report for IFAD following a Results Measurement Framework that was designed for the facility.