Social Protection

Building social protection floors
and comprehensive social security systems

Malawi

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Situation and Priorities

Social protection situation

Poverty in Malawi is both widespread and severe, with 51 per cent of Malawians living below the national poverty line and 70.6 per cent below the international poverty line of US$2.15 per day. About 20 per cent of Malawians are ultra-poor, living below the nationally determined food poverty line. This poverty profile suggests that most of the population is extremely vulnerable to inflationary spikes, lacking the financial buffers to cushion the effects of inflation and avoid resorting to negative coping mechanisms.

Malawi’s social protection system offers limited protection both in terms of quality and coverage of the population. Social assistance programmes mostly characterize the social protection sector in Malawi. The flagship social cash transfer programme currently targets 10 per cent of labour-constrained ultra-poor households (about 304,000 beneficiary households). Other programmes include public works (about 451,000 beneficiaries) and school meals programmes (about 3,002,661 beneficiaries) implemented in selected districts.

The Malawi Social Support Policy (MSSP) and Malawi National Social Support Programme (MNSSP II) set the building blocks of the country’s strategy on social protection. Adopted in 2018, the MNSSPII provides a wide-ranging framework for the development of the social protection system in the country. Malawi’s social protection system is inadequate, as social assistance programmes mainly target the ultra-poor. Although the social cash transfer programme is scaled up across all 28 districts, with a fixed 10 per cent coverage threshold, it reaches a very small proportion of the poor and vulnerable population given that 20.5 per cent of the whole population live in ultra-poverty. The government has approved an increase in coverage of social cash transfers to 15 per cent of the labour-constrained ultra-poor households. Malawi has a mandatory pension scheme covers private-sector employees working in firms with more than five workers and public-sector employees aged 35 or younger on July 1st, 2017. Only 21.3 % of the population are covered by at least one social protection benefit and only 19.6 % of vulnerable persons receive non-contributory cash benefit. The social protection legal framework is only limited to employment based contributory social security schemes, such as the pension and workers compensation scheme. Workers are protected in cases of employment injury, termination and maternity through employer liability schemes that do not provide adequate protection to workers and may constitute a high and often unpredictable cost to employers.

In November 2024 the government formally adopted the New National Social Protection Policy. The new National Social Protection Policy provides a foundation for promoting an adequate and sustainable social protection system in Malawi with improved scope and coverage of the social protection system. The new national policy provides for policy measures for expanding both social assistance and social insurance programmes.

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COVID-19 and other crises

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 placed significant social and economic pressure on the country’s economy, straining the country's social protection system, especially in the health sector. The COVID-19 pandemic had negative socio-economic effects on both urban and rural populations in Malawi. At the national level, the COVID-19 pandemic led to social, economic, and health challenges, increasing vulnerability across different sectors and among the population. This placed demand on the social protection system necessitating the provision of increased social protection programmes.

As part of the 2020 National COVID-19 Preparedness and Response Plan, the Government of Malawi initiated the COVID-19 Urban Cash Initiative (CUCI) to mitigate the pandemic's adverse impacts on livelihoods and basic consumption for poor populations in the urban cities of Lilongwe, Blantyre, Zomba and Mzuzu. The intervention implemented in the poorest hotspots of the cities, targeting 35 percent of each city’s population, ultimately enrolling over 199,000 households. The temporary cash intervention provided a monthly transfer level of MWK 35,000 for a total of three months. The CUCI was the first major cash transfer program in Malawi to focus on urban areas, providing an opportunity for learning lessons that have shaped the extension of social protection programmes to the urban poor and designing shock-responsive interventions.

Since COVID-19, Malawi has experienced a difficult macro-fiscal situation, worsened by the impact of local and global macroeconomic shocks. For example, in Malawi, this challenging scenario is exacerbated by the consequences of Tropical Cyclones Ana (900,000 affected people) and Gombe which severely hit the southern part of the country, destroying thousands of hectares of crops, forcing the displacement of hundreds of thousands, causing losses of goods, damage to cash crops such as sugar and tea, and the crippling of energy production (Malawi Poverty Update – April 2022, World Bank). The Government of Malawi has strengthened and leveraged the social protection system to meet heightened food needs during the annual lean season for vulnerable and poor populations. The Government of Malawi has identified social protection as a key instrument in addressing national poverty and vulnerability.

Visit the Social Protection COVID-19 Monitor
Government and social partner priorities

The MNSSPII focuses on three thematic pillars:

  1. Consumption Support: The provision of consumption support through timely, predictable and adequate cash and/or in-kind transfers to poor and vulnerable people throughout their life cycles.
  2. Resilient Livelihoods: Promote resilient livelihoods through tailored packages based on individual, household, and community needs.
  3. Shock-Sensitive Social Protection: Reduce vulnerability and enhance the resilience of the population to disasters and socio-economic shocks.
  4. Systems strengthening and promoting linkages for a coherent and effective social protection system

The government of Malawi also want to:

  • Review the national social support policy to expand coverage, inclusiveness, quality  and adequacy of the social protection system in Malawi.
  • Explore how to effectively extend coverage of social insurance schemes to the informal economy.
  • Reform the pension system to facilitate adequacy of benefits and extension of coverage including to the informal economy.
  • Establish the Workers Compensation Fund
  • Establish the social pension scheme
  • Improve the accountability and transparency of social protection programmes.
  • The Government of Malawi has identified job creation, wealth creation, and food security as part of key instruments to advance national development.

The Government of Malawi became a pathfinder country for implementation of the Global Accelerator on Jobs and Social Protection for Just Transitions Initiative in September 2022. Through the Global Accelerator initiative, the government aims to implement integrated policy measures to accelerate job creation and extension of the social protection system.

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Results

The ILO, in collaboration with UNICEF and GIZ, played a key role in the elaboration of the MNSSPII, providing inputs and a multi-level review process to allow stakeholders to reach consensus on key lessons from the first National Social Support Programme. The ILO also assisted in the development of the national employment injury insurance scheme, which will be launched in 2021.

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Funding gaps / Support the ILO

US$ ٣٠٠٬٠٠٠

Updated national social protection policy and roll out of implementation plan

Impact: N° of persons potentially covered by a strategy - Potentially 8,205,369 million people in the labor force (data from World Bank)
US$ ٢٥٠٬٠٠٠

Social protection governance and operational capacity strengthened

Impact: N° of persons with better access to social protection (single registry, online application, one stop-service)
US$ ١٠٠٬٠٠٠

National strategy for Extending social protection to informal economy

Impact: N° of persons potentially covered by a strategy
US$ ١٥٠٬٠٠٠

Culture of social protection and accountability strengthened

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