In April 2026, the Observatory convened an ‘evidence capitalization workshop’ with partners to synthesize insights and key messages on issues and opportunities that can advance early action for dryland resilience and prosperity in the Horn of Africa. This policy brief and accompanying short video are products of this exercise.
Summary
Social protection is a program that helps people manage shocks and crises and improve their wellbeing. The main types are social assistance, social insurance, labour markets and informal safety nets.
In the Horn of Africa, formal social protection is typically provided by government led mechanisms and sometimes through humanitarian agencies.
However, declining humanitarian and development aid threatens this model, creating a protection vacuum for people in drylands, exactly as multiple crises hit them.
Thus, we see a growing recognition that informal or semi-formal protection mechanisms of communities, rooted in social and kin-based mutual relationships, can play important roles, especially in fragile contexts with limited state infrastructure and financial base.
As the search for complementary informal and formal systems accelerates, this brief explores tensions and synergies between them and ways to improve and sustain the delivery of social protection in pastoral areas.
Key messages
- Recognize the existing multi-faceted informal social assistance that communities have long used and relied on, not just during crises. Formal social protection can supplement, but not supplant, this.
- Fragmented social protection approaches fail to cushion people against multiple intersecting crises.
- National social protection policies typically fail to fully integrate and improve informal mechanisms.
- Informal mechanisms are horizontal, mutual and driven by social relations based on kinship, reigion and friendship. Formal mechanisms are often top-down, technocratic and driven by political interest and market logic. Different drivers reach different results.
- Social protection for pastoralist areas should shift from universal targeting to context-sensitive targeting through locally trusted channels and institutions.
- We need to better understand the two systems, how they complement one another and strategies to bundle or layer them more effectively.