The MERANKABANDI cash transfer project provides regular cash payments of Burundian francs (BIF) 20,000 per household per month to help households meet their basic needs and is coupled with behaviour change promotion activities. A beneficiary household remains in the programme for three years (two and a half years with cash and behaviour change activities, and six months with behaviour change activities only). The direct beneficiaries within the household are: (i) women – as cash transfer recipients and targets of some of the behaviour change activities; and (ii) children under 12 years of age – as targets of the behaviour change activities and human capital investments. The cash is transferred using mobile phones.

The objective of this work was to review the complementary activities of the cash transfer programme using a gender approach and to formulate recommendations on how to structure these activities so that they better meet the needs of women and young girls.

The report follows an initial review of the core cash transfer module, which analysed the various risks and vulnerabilities that women and girls face in the context of Burundi, and which assessed the extent to which the cash transfer programme addressed these.