Building Resilience, Not Dependence: Burkina Faso Redesigns Social Protection

The World Bank has approved a five-year, $120 million project aimed at expanding economic opportunities for vulnerable households and strengthening Burkina Faso’s social protection system. Building on a decade-long safety-net programme, the new operation reflects a broader shift from providing assistance alone towards combining social support with skills, livelihoods, human development and resilience to future shocks.

The World Bank's new five-year project in Burkina Faso seeks to connect social assistance with economic opportunity, human development and protection from future shocks. Backed by $120 million, the initiative signals a shift from helping vulnerable households survive immediate hardship towards building a more coordinated system designed to strengthen their longer-term resilience.

The Burkina Faso Economic Opportunities for Resilience Project will be implemented over five years. It will receive a $100 million credit from the International Development Association, the World Bank institution that provides concessional financing to lower-income countries, and a $20 million grant from the Sahel Adaptive Social Protection Program.

The approval renews cooperation between the World Bank Group and Burkina Faso's government in the social protection sector. However, the project is not designed simply as another channel for distributing assistance. It combines economic empowerment, skills development, food security, nutrition and health support with efforts to improve the public systems used to identify and assist vulnerable households.

The project treats poverty and vulnerability as more than a shortage of immediate income. It recognises that a household's economic prospects can also be constrained by poor health, limited skills, food insecurity, displacement and exposure to climate-related or other shocks.

The operation will support Burkina Faso's National Social Protection Strategy for 2024–2028 and a new flagship initiative, the Economic Empowerment Support Program for Poor and Vulnerable Households. It is expected to target 120,000 beneficiaries, including internally displaced people and returnees.

From emergency support to economic opportunity

The project builds on the Burkina Naong Sa Ya, or "Ending Poverty," Social Safety Nets Project, which operated from 2014 to 2024. That programme reached more than one million beneficiaries with social assistance and helped establish a national registry of vulnerable households.

The new operation represents a change in emphasis. While assistance remains important, the focus now extends to helping households develop the capabilities needed to pursue more productive and secure livelihoods. Skills development, nutrition, healthcare and food security are positioned as foundations for access to productive and better jobs. This reflects a broader understanding of social protection: support should not only help people cope with hardship but also reduce the barriers preventing them from improving their economic position.

The ambition is especially relevant for internally displaced people and returnees, whose inclusion connects social protection with the economic consequences of displacement and reintegration. These groups may require more than temporary assistance. Access to livelihoods, basic services and reliable administrative recognition can shape whether households are able to rebuild some measure of economic stability.

Women's economic empowerment is another core objective. The promise of economic empowerment will therefore depend on the practical details: who receives assistance, what kind of training or livelihood support is offered, whether services are accessible and how outcomes are measured over the five-year implementation period.

The social registry becomes critical infrastructure

One of the project's most consequential elements may be less visible than its livelihood programmes. The operation will expand the coverage and use of Burkina Faso's national social registry and seek to integrate it with other databases, including those concerning internally displaced people and health insurance.

A social registry is more than a list of households. When reliable and regularly updated, it can serve as shared infrastructure through which different government programmes identify people who may qualify for assistance.

Connecting databases could make it easier to detect gaps in coverage, limit duplication and coordinate support across institutions. It may also help authorities identify households facing overlapping vulnerabilities, such as displacement, poor access to healthcare and economic insecurity. But data integration is not automatically the same as effective inclusion. Registries can contain incomplete, outdated or inconsistent information. Eligible households may be omitted, while people already registered may struggle to obtain the assistance intended for them.

The project's success will depend on how data is collected, updated and used. Clear procedures will also be needed for households to correct inaccurate information or challenge decisions affecting their access to support.

Delivery will decide whether resilience is real

The project brings together an extensive set of objectives: poverty reduction, employment support, women's empowerment, food security, nutrition, health, social cohesion and resilience to climate-related and other shocks. Such breadth creates opportunities for more comprehensive support, but it also increases the demands on implementing institutions. Skills programmes, health services, nutrition interventions and livelihood assistance require different expertise, delivery networks and monitoring systems. Weak coordination could reduce their collective impact.

Targeting will be another challenge. The previous project reached more than one million beneficiaries, while the new operation aims to support 120,000. These figures should not be directly compared without further information, since they may represent different forms of assistance, eligibility criteria or definitions of beneficiaries.

The meaning of resilience will also need to be translated into measurable outcomes. It is not enough to report how many people entered a programme or were added to a registry. Assessment will need to consider whether households improved their economic prospects, strengthened their food security, gained access to essential services or became better able to withstand and recover from shocks.

The next milestones will include the rollout of the Economic Empowerment Support Program, the publication of beneficiary-selection criteria and greater clarity on the services available to participants. The participation of women, internally displaced people and returnees will require particular attention.

Equally important will be the way Burkina Faso's institutions coordinate programmes and maintain the social registry. Reliable data, transparent targeting and functioning grievance mechanisms will be essential if the expanded system is to reach people who might otherwise remain excluded.