CSPS Seminar on "COVID-19 shock responsive social protection interventions: A review of efforts and missed opportunities in Ghana"

The onset of Covid-19 has tested the shock responsiveness of social protection programmes around the world. In this seminar, we examine Ghana’s Covid-19 responses using five criteria of Shock Responsive Social Protection – vertical expansion, horizontal expansion, piggybacking, shadow alignment, and refocusing. Our findings suggest that, except for the expansion of a few existing interventions, most of Ghana’s COVID-19 social protection focused on the development of parallel humanitarian systems (shadow alignment). We conclude that Ghana must consider how its social protection measures can anticipate shocks, including by establishing flexible institutions that are resilient to shocks.