Elsevier

World Development

Volume 40, Issue 8, August 2012, Pages 1619-1633
World Development

Who is Vouching for the Input Voucher? Decentralized Targeting and Elite Capture in Tanzania

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2012.04.012Get rights and content

Summary

Through decentralized targeting of input vouchers new agricultural input subsidy programs aim to more effectively reach their objectives and target population. But, lingering fears of elite capture remain. These are borne out in the 2009 input voucher program in Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. Sixty percent of the voucher beneficiaries were households with village officials. This significantly reduced the targeting performance of the program, especially in unequal and remote communities. When targeting the poor, greater coverage and concentration in higher trust settings mitigated these concerns. Scrutiny remains important when relying on decentralized targeting, as is a clearer sense of purpose of input vouchers.

Section snippets

The challenge of targeting

Over the past couple of years, many governments in Sub-Saharan Africa have re-embraced large scale agricultural input subsidy programs to raise their agricultural output and reduce poverty among their smallholders (Kelly, Crawford, & Ricker-Gilbert, 2011). It is argued that many of the past shortcomings of nationwide input subsidy programs such as the limited increase in smallholder productivity, unsustainably high fiscal burdens, and political entrenchment can be overcome if the programs are

The input voucher program in Tanzania

Following the 2007/8 food crisis, the Government of Tanzania launched an input voucher pilot program in 56 districts to increase the production of two of its major staple crops—maize and rice—and enhance its national food security. The program was geographically targeted to areas most suitable for maize and paddy rice production, which are mainly concentrated in the Southern and Northern Highlands and the Western Region, while also taking into account the number of smallholder agricultural

The targeting differential

Following Galasso and Ravallion (2005), three measures of targeting are defined:Gp=s11H,Gn=s121-H,T=Gp-Gnwhere H is the proportion of all households in the targeted group, s11 is the proportion of all households that are in the targeted group and receive the program, s12 is the proportion of all households who are not in the targeted group but still receive the program. Gp and Gn therefore measure the proportions of households in the targeted group that receive the program and the proportion of

Concluding remarks

Input subsidy programs have once again become popular to increase agricultural productivity across Sub-Saharan Africa. Given that their fiscal burden can be high and typically increases over time, they only carry broad support to the extent that they address market failures, such as credit and insurance market failures, and to the extent that they generate multiplier effects by increasing aggregate output and reducing staple food prices. This presumes proper targeting, with decentralized

Acknowledgment

The authors would like to thank DFID and REPOA for funding and collaboration on the data collection as well as four anonymous referees and the World Bank staff at the Tanzania Country Office for their comments. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive

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