Although great strides have been made, Africa still lags behind other parts of the world in the reduction of poverty. We now know that the poorest people rarely benefit from poverty reduction programmes, and this is especially true in some countries of sub-Saharan Africa. Microfinance programmes, for example, that can help many poor people improve their lives do not generally reach the poorest people – casual labourers in remote rural areas, ethnic and indigenous minorities, older people, widows, migrants, bonded labourers and others.
As a result, NGOs and donors have started to mount programmes explicitly targeting the extreme poor, the poorest and the ultra-poor. This book follows on from What works for the Poorest: Poverty Reduction Programmes for the World's Extreme Poor and examines such initiatives in Africa. Through a set of carefully selected papers it questions why the poorest often do not benefit from poverty reduction and growth policies, analyses innovative ultra-poor programmes from around the continent, and explores the lessons that emerge from this new and important body of knowledge.
What Works for Africa's poorest: poverty reduction programmes for extremely poor people contains a unique cross-section of country-specific case studies from across SSA, combined with cross-country analyses of important programmes, written by practitioners, academics and advisers. It is essential reading for researchers and students studying poverty in international development and for policy makers and programme managers involved in poverty reduction programmes.

Prelims [Preface| Foreword| Acknowledgements]
Part A
Who are sub-Saharan Africa’s extreme poor and how to target them
1. What works for Africa’s poorest?
David Hulme and David Lawson
2.Defining, targeting, and reaching the very poor in Benin
Anika Altaf and Nicky Pouw
3. Towards inclusive targeting: the Zimbabwe Harmonized Social Cash Transfer (HSCT) programme
Bernd Schubert
Part B
Africa’s children and youth
4. Africa’s extreme poor: surviving early childhood
Lawrence Ado-Kofie and David Lawson
5. Cash for care? Researching the linkages between social protection and children’s care in Rwanda
Keetie Roelen, Helen Karki Chettri and Emily Delap
6. Promoting employment, protecting youth: BRAC’s Empowerment and Livelihoods for Adolescent Girls Programme in Uganda and Tanzania
Nicola Banks
Part C
Getting Africa to ‘work’
7. Female engagement in commercial agriculture, interventions, and welfare in Malawi
Ralitza Dimova and Ira N. Gang
8. Effects of food assistance: evaluation of a food-for-training project in South Sudan
Munshi Sulaiman
9. The role of public works in addressing poverty: lessons from recent developments in public works programming
Anna McCord
10. Exploring potentials and limits of graduation: Tanzania’s Social Action Fund
Usha Mishra and Emmanuel J. Mtambie
11. Do ‘graduation’ programmes work for Africa’s poorest?
Stephen Devereux
Part D
Poverty reduction for Africa’s poorest – implementation and policy thoughts
12. Institutional and policy challenges in the implementation of social protection: the case of Nigeria
Rebecca Holmes
13. The conditions for conditionality in cash transfers: does one size fit all?
Luca Pellerano and Valentina Barca
14. Effective cash transfers for the poorest in Africa: a focus on supply capacity
Francisco Ayala
15. Access to justice for the very poorest and marginalized in Uganda
Adam Dubin and David Lawson
16. Conclusion
David Hulme, David Lawson and Lawrence Ado-Kofie
Index

‘After 50 years of “development”, the number of Africans living in dire poverty remains tragically and disgracefully high. This book brings together important new insights on the understanding that outsiders themselves must achieve before they can begin to think about reaching the poorest and changing their reality.’
Ian Smillie, author of Freedom from Want and Diamonds
‘If responding to extreme poverty was easy or obvious, the world would surely have figured it out by now. But it’s neither easy nor obvious, so we need the types of context-specific insights exemplified by these excellent chapters, which are grounded in an informed dialogue between careful research, hard-won experience and ethical advocacy.’
Michael Woolcock, World Bank and Harvard University