Ministry of Finance, Economic Planning and Decentralisation has conceded that the country’s social protection system continues to face major challenges, including limited coverage, weak evidence and heavy reliance on donor financing.
The ministry said in the Malawi Social Protection Research Agenda published by the Department of Economic Planning and Development that evidence gaps are undermining efforts to improve programmes and ensure vulnerable households are adequately protected.
The report identifies gaps in understanding who remain excluded from social protection, whether benefits are adequate, how programmes affect different groups and whether interventions are helping households build sustainable livelihoods.
It reads in part: “Structured research is essential to build a robust evidence base to inform policy, improve performance, and generate in-depth learning and knowledge to address emerging vulnerabilities and implementation challenges.”
A 2021 Mid-Term Review of the predecessor strategy identified weak monitoring, evaluation and learning, inclusion/ exclusion errors, low transfer values, fragmented programme coordination, and donor dependency as persistent challenges.
The Government of Malawi, with support from development partners, established a social protection system anchored in several social safety nets, social insurance, and labour market programmes.
United Nation (UN) data show that social safety nets reach just 27 percent of more than 20 million Malawians despite that 51 percent of the people live in poverty while 75 percent survive on less than $3 (about K5 253) a day.
At the same time, Malawi spends just 0.9 percent of its gross domestic product on social safety nets, below the two percent regional average while heavy reliance on donor aid, at 95 percent, puts their sustainability at risk, according to UN.
Already, the government has cut the social protection budget in the 2026/27 financial year from K217 billion in the last fiscal calendar to K123 billion in the current one, affecting one million beneficiaries.
In an interview, Centre for Social Concern economic governance officer Agness Nyirongo observed that while social protection should be transformative and future-oriented, current programmes largely provide short-term relief.
“While they help reduce extreme hunger, they rarely enable families to invest, save or build sustainable livelihoods,” she said.
Malawi’s social protection system currently covers roughly 21.3 percent of the population, focusing primarily on social assistance for vulnerable groups and public works for the able-bodied.
In May last year, Malawi rolled out a new National Social Protection Policy, a move described as a key step in shifting the country’s response to poverty and vulnerability to shield the poor from economic and climate shocks.
The five-year policy that runs from 2024–2029 replaces the 2012 one and introduces a coordinated, lifecycle-based approach.
The policy also centres on seven strategic pillars, which include social security for informal workers, nutrition-sensitive programming, shock-responsive safety nets and support for resilient livelihoods.
These pillars reflect lessons from past disasters that overwhelmed Malawi’s response systems while the policy’s design aims to address those gaps before the next crisis hits.
The policy is tied closely to broader national and continental goals, including Malawi 2063, the country’s long-term development plan that seeks to turn Malawi into a lower middle-income economy by 2030 and an upper middle-income economy by 2063, the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, particularly those that focus on ending poverty and reducing inequality.
