Reducing Poverty And Promoting Growth In Ghana THE LIVELIHOOD EMPOWERMENT AGAINST POVERTY (LEAP) PROGRAMME

With regards to Ghana, in order to tackle extreme poverty and achieve the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the government has, in recent years, adopted a number of initiatives, including the launch of the National Social Protection Strategy (NSPS) in 2007. The strategy, which represents the Government of Ghana’s vision of ‘creating an all-inclusive society through the provision of sustainable mechanisms for the protection of persons living in situations of extreme poverty, vulnerability and exclusion’, consists of three main components designed to tackle extreme poverty: 1. The establishment of a new social grant scheme to provide a basic and secure income for the most vulnerable households. 2. Better poverty targeting of existing social protection programmes. 3. A package of complementary inputs for beneficiaries of Social Protection programmes. It is within this context that the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) cash transfer programme, the flagship programme of Ghana’s National Social Protection Strategy, was introduced in 2008. The programme, which is currently administered by the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection and managed by the Department of Social Welfare, aims at providing a safety net for the poorest and most marginalised groups in Ghanaian society, notably the bottom 20% of the extreme poor in Ghana who, according to the 2005 Ghana Living Standard Survey, comprise 3.7 million of the country’s population. To this end it seeks to protect and empower extremely poor families consisting of the elderly (aged 65 and above), the disabled who are unable to work, and carers of Orphans and Since its launch in 2008 as Ghana’s flagship programme of the National Social Protection Strategy, the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme has enabled the poorest families in the country to meet their basic needs (food, clothing and shelter), be healthier, enrol their children in school as well as improve their attendance, and adopt strategies to pull themselves out of poverty. LEAP, with the influx of cash in the community, also enhances the local economy by increasing demand and boosting economic activity. BRIEFING PAPER Reducing Poverty And Promoting Growth In Ghana THE LIVELIHOOD EMPOWERMENT AGAINST POVERTY (LEAP) PROGRAMME