Project Title: Providing high expertise on social protection

Africa Label Group (ALG) successfully executed a long-term, high-impact assignment in Burundi, providing specialized technical assistance to bolster the country’s social protection system. This extensive project, undertaken in partnership with UNICEF, spanned from April 2020 to August 2022, demonstrating ALG’s commitment to sustained engagement and in-depth support.

• Country of Assignment: Burundi
• Client: UNICEF
• Period: April 2020 – August 2022 (Long-term agreement)

Core Objective of the Consultancy:

The primary goal of the consultancy was to ensure the robust implementation of Burundi’s national safety net program while simultaneously providing the necessary policy framework and technical elements to consolidate and strengthen social protection interventions across the country. Initially scoped for a period of approximately 6 to 7 months, with a kick-off in December and two in-country missions, the project ultimately evolved into a multi-year partnership, reflecting the depth and complexity of the required support.

The consultancy’s work was strategically organized around achieving three distinct, yet interconnected, levels of results:

1. Capacity Building on Social Protection: This crucial pillar focused on enhancing the skills, knowledge, and institutional capacity of key national stakeholders—including government counterparts, local implementers, and partners—to design, manage, and monitor effective social protection programs independently and sustainably.
2. Evidence Generation: A foundational element of the work involved conducting rigorous analysis, studies, and assessments to generate high-quality evidence. This data-driven approach was essential for informing policy decisions, understanding the impact of existing interventions, and identifying vulnerable populations and coverage gaps.
3. Policy Advocacy: The third objective centered on translating the generated evidence and technical insights into actionable policy recommendations. This involved high-level advocacy and technical support to government bodies to help formulate, refine, and adopt progressive social protection policies that align with international best practices and national development goals.

Scope and Execution:

The assignment’s primary function was to support the UNICEF team by injecting high-level, specialized expertise into the social protection sector. This support covered several critical areas, including system strengthening, targeted training delivery, and in-depth analytical work, all managed through an Institutional Contract mechanism.

To deliver on this complex mandate, ALG mobilized a dedicated team of four high-quality, specialized experts. These consultants brought a wealth of technical knowledge and practical experience to the project, enabling ALG to effectively manage the more technical and specialized components of the assignment and ensure the delivery of a clearly defined set of expected outputs and deliverables associated with each of the three specific objectives. Through this institutional support, ALG helped UNICEF and the Burundian government move closer to achieving a comprehensive and resilient national social protection system.