In Country - Ethiopia | Collaborative Cash Delivery Network

Ethiopia

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, a focus was placed on market monitoring as the impact on markets was quickly apparent. The CCD and REACH formed a partnership to utilize the Ethiopia CCD’s members’ current and widespread access to markets, and REACH’s existing technical expertise in market monitoring and leading nation-wide joint market monitoring initiatives. This has achieved buy-in from the ECWG and WaSH cluster and has resulted in the Ethiopia Joint Market Monitoring Initiative (JMMI) being established, which has both harmonised approaches to market monitoring within the Ethiopia CCD and results in nation-wide (at the Woreda level) market monitoring analysis being available to all cash actors. This partnership has now produced a secondary data review and two factsheets analysing market data from November and December 2020.

Members

Ethiopia's CCD is one of CCD's functioning in-country partnerships. There are 14 members – 13 of which are part of CCD's global membership operating in Ethiopia. They are aiming to harmonise cash delivery in Ethiopia for increased scale, efficiency, effectiveness, and collective impact. The network materalised in an oranic way, with numerous ongoing initiatives to foster collaboration at the advocacy, networking, and operational levels and respond to evolving demands.

Founding members include: Action Against Hunger, CARE, Concern, CRS, DCA, DRC, International Rescue Committee (IRC), Mercy Corps, NRC, Oxfam, Save the Children, and World Vision. ACTED and GOAL joined in December 2019.

CCD Ethiopia is welcoming new members; they do not have to be a part of the global CCD network.

Governance

CCD Ethiopia’s members have all signed a memorandum of understanding and agreed on a Governance Framework. The national network is overseen by a Steering Committee and an in-country Collaboration Manager.

The Steering Committee is responsible for the strategic direction and priorities of the Ethiopia network. It rotates, three seats at a time, on an annual basis. It is chaired by the Collaboration Manager, who is member-neutral and does not have a vote.

The current Steering Committee consists of: Action Against Hunger, CARE, CRS, NRC, Oxfam, and World Vision.

CCD member representatives at CCD Ethiopia's December 2019 meeting

In-Country Collaboration Effort (July 2019)

Making CCD a reality within a country's context is a process. CCD's model has provided CCD Ethiopia a framework to move things forward for the Ethiopian cash community and will benefit the aid community as a whole. We understand it will take time to work towards our goals, but this gives us the opportunity to try out different models and adapt them to our context to ensure CCD is a value add within Ethiopia's cash community. We are working towards identifying collaboration opportunities, our priorities, and deciding how we can leverage our collective expertise to effect change in cash programming in Ethiopia to result in harmonised cash delivery for increased scale, efficiency, effectiveness, and collective impact.

To this end, CCD Ethiopia is pursuing increased collaboration opportunities across the country and cash value chain by:

enabling a unified and visible local network of cash NGOs
building relationships and trust between CCD members
utilising collaboration models based on context, strengths, and need
establishing frameworks to identify priorities, advocacy, collaborative operations, donor relationships, etc.
combining voices to advocate for issues relevant to local cash actors and NGOs
facilitating faster resolutions for technical challenges
improving collective preparedness for cash programming.

Quality Assurance

Four implementing agencies are already operating using common standard operating procedures.

Capabilities

Ethiopia's CCD network has identified technical support to be an essential need in their context as often technical advisers don’t have the time to improve their practice and learn from each other. CCD Ethiopia will form a common technical unit to serve the different partners within the network. They have also mapped each member's technical expertise and operational presence which will allow them to establish the strongest combination of partners across the cash value chain in each consortium they form, tailored to the specific need identified.

Oversight

An interim Collaboration Manager arrived in country in August 2019 to help the Ethiopia network finalise their governance framework, deciding how they will operate strategically, technically, and operationally, and oversee the Steering Committee election to ensure they continued moving forward. With that, the Steering Committee signed off on the Governance Framework at the national level.

Activities

Cash Programming

The Ethiopia network conducted their first cash distribution, funded by European Commission (ECHO) in the Wollegas zones in September 2019. This cash delivery project in the Wollegas, with an additional drought response in the Somali West region, will allow CCD Ethiopia to apply this recommended model and prove its effectiveness.

To optimise effectiveness, CCD Ethiopia set up the ECHO-CCD 2019 consortium with its members who were best placed to operationalise the project based on expertise and geographical footprint. In the Wollegas, World Vision was the lead agency who oversaw digital beneficiary management, Save the Children was in charge of monitoring, evaluation, accountability, and learning (MEAL), and ACF and IRC led cash transfers, including registration. All agencies collaborated how to harmonise targeting processes. In the Somali West region, Save the Children and World Vision were responsible for cash transfers and IRC managed MEAL.