Extra financing for the Safety Net Project has been approved by the Executive Board of the World Bank, Rebekka E. Grun, Assistant to the President of the World Bank, has said. Sixty million US dollars (about FCFA 34.9 billion) have already been mobilized and it is left on the Cameroon government to sign a legal agreement to get the funds.
Rebekka, who is on a working visit to Cameroon to evaluate the Safety Net Project, said with the additional financing, the project will now touch every region of the country. It had previously been limited to the Far North, North, Adamawa, East and North West Regions, as well as the cities of Douala and Yaounde.
Of the 60million USD, 30 million USD is a loan and the rest a grant. The World Bank had earlier pumped in over FCFA 30 billion this year for the project which is in its second phase. Rebekka said the project has had a solid track record of implementation. “We are happy with the progress of the project,” she told Cameroon Tribune in Yaounde, Wednesday November 28, 2018.
Beneficiaries Learn New Skills
On Monday November 26, 2018, some 700 persons in Yaounde, mostly women and girls, were empowered with vocational skills as part of the Social Safety Net Project; an initiative for alleviating poverty in Cameroon’s poorest communities. Part of the training on tinting was carried out at the Nkomkana Party Hall in Yaounde. The World Bank-funded project will also see beneficiaries trained on pedicure, manicure, detergent and soap production, drying of fruits and cocoa processing.
According to officials, there are some 1,500 beneficiaries of the Safety Net Project in Yaounde II sub-division, though just about 700 of them were concerned with the skills acquisition. Cameroon Tribune learned the training is to enable the beneficiaries to be self-sustainable even after the project ends. The project is essentially a cash transfer programme targeting extremely poor and vulnerable households in some select regions and towns. In the last five years, the project covered some 84,000 households.