Financing social protection in Ethiopia

Social protection is at the centre of Ethiopia’s development policy. It is instrumental in reducing poverty and increasing the resilience of the population. The Government of Ethiopia (GoE) has published a new set of policy frameworks for social protection that envisage the expansion of social protection to cover a greater proportion of Ethiopians against a broader range of risks, and that call for social protection to be increasingly financed from domestic sources rather than by donors. A financing strategy for the implementation of this vision has been identified as a priority by the GoE. This study responds to this requirement. It provides a comprehensive mapping of social protection spending across the five focus areas of the national social protection policy and analyses the fiscal space available for different spending scenarios up to 2025/26. The study focuses on two issues in particular: the role of donor financing for social protection and the relationship between humanitarian relief and social protection spending.