Cash for Assets (CFA) is a joint World Food Programme (WFP)/Government of Kenya conditional cash transfer scheme that reaches food insecure households in seven arid and semi-arid land (ASAL) counties in eastern and coastal Kenya, where recipients work on community assets to build resilience against drought.
CFA launched as a pilot to test a different mechanism for delivering assistance in the Food for Assets (FFA) program, which has been running since 2003. WFP, a food assistance organization within the United Nations, has historically and continues primarily to use the distribution of in-kind food aid in its programs. As WFP has expanded its scope from “food aid” to “food assistance,” it took a conservative and iterative approach to designing and implementing CFA over the course of nearly five years.
Although WFP Kenya began experimenting with shifts away from food aid through CFA, it did not consider physical cash distribution, deeming it too insecure and fraught with risk, given high levels of corruption in Kenya. Because it involves linking to a mainstream financial account, financial inclusion has been a core objective since the program’s inception.
Although CFA is linked with the Kenyan government at the national and local levels, WFP drives program management and depends on other international donors to provide funds for payments. Working with Equity Bank from the design and prepilot phases in 2009, WFP Kenya3 has recently conducted a competitive bid process and selected Cooperative Bank as its new payment service provider (PSP) for 2013–2015. 6. The payment scheme has evolved with and adjusted to the realities on the ground over time, driven by a “test-learn-iterate” philosophy. As such, the payment scheme has experienced several course corrections since its conception in 2009.