By Feima Kpaka
As Chairman of the Inter-Agency Forum on Social Protection (IAF), the Honorable Vice President, Dr Mohamed Juldeh Jalloh will preside over the annual IAF meeting scheduled in Kenema district from 9th -11th August 2024.
The IAF is a multi-stakeholder social protection platform comprising national entities and international partners implementing social protection programs. The IAF meeting, which is the highest deliberative platform, brings together key actors to define national social protection priorities and programs.
Since 2019, the IAF has continued to provide updates on the implementation of Social Protection programs in the country with the key objective of enhancing coordination, policy coherence, resource mobilization, and evaluation of the implementation of Social Protection initiatives and programs.
The meeting that is scheduled to commenced from the 9th to the 11th will take place at a time of immense transformation in the sector particularly following Government efforts to establish a Social Protection Agency to deepen coordination in the sector.
The IAF will also be used to assess previous initiatives such as the productive social safety nets proposed by IAF held in Makeni in 2019.
At this year’s IAF meeting, priority will be given to the positioning of Social Protection programming in light of President Bio’s big five changers.
The Commissioner of NaCSA who leads the Social Protection portfolio highlighted the key objectives of this year’s IAF in a working meeting with the Honorable Vice President. *Since he arrived at the helm of NaCSA, Commissioner Ndomahina has expanded the frontiers of Social Protection Programming including widening the scope of engagement and coordination.
The IAF is keeping to its tradition of holding meetings in the provinces that allow members to combine deliberations with field visits of key social protection activities and beneficiaries.