In Senegal, more than 540,000 households will each receive a cash transfer of 80,000 CFA francs.
The Senegalese Head of State is pursuing what he calls his “proactive social inclusion” policy, targeting in particular the country’s vulnerable families. On Tuesday, May 10, at the Grand Theatre National in Dakar, he officially launched the operations of exceptional cash transfers to 542,956 households registered in the Single National Register (Rnu). For an overall envelope of 43.4 billion CFA francs, Macky Sall said that each family will be able to receive an amount of 80,000 CFA francs.
“The objective is to give 80,000 CFA francs per needy household and thus improve their level of consumption and the education of their children. We have succeeded in this challenge thanks to an innovative financial arrangement in terms of social assistance and national solidarity,” he said before the representative of the World Bank, the main financial partner of the program.
According to Nathan Belete, the World Bank’s Director of Operations, the program allows each beneficiary family “to meet their particular needs, making purchases from merchants and boosting the local economy.”
However, this transfer of fund two months ahead of the legislative elections has raised questions in a country where the presidential coalition has lost major cities and towns in the January 2022 local elections. In 2020, former Prime Minister Abdoul Mbaye did not refrain from criticizing these financial operations, which he described as a “scandal.” He deplored the fact that the state aid distributed to the people by cash transfer is with the words “Macky Sall sent you.”
This is not the first time that the State, under the impulse of President Sall, has made this gesture to vulnerable families. In addition to the family scholarships of 25,000 CFA francs paid every three months, he has supported to the tune of 2.5 billion nearly 2,500 families victims of floods in September 2020 in Keur Massar, a new district in the suburbs of Dakar.
For the Head of State, the impact of this funding is considerable as it has contributed to the reduction of poverty levels in the country. “Thanks to the combined efforts of the government of Senegal and its partners, the poverty rate in Senegal has decreased by 5 percent, while waiting for the consolidated results of the last survey which will be available in December 2022,” he said.
In addition, the cash transfer policy “is not limited to fighting extreme poverty and vulnerability, but it integrates the empowerment of beneficiaries by helping to improve the living conditions of the people,” said Macky Sall, dismissing any political idea behind these cash transfers.
For him, this financial support will allow people to improve the level of education of children as well as consumption, in a context of global crisis marked by basic commodities’ high prices.
ODL/te/fss/abj/APA