This research was conducted by Dr. Edward Thomas, Ranga Gworo of the Conflict Sensitivity Resource Facility (CSRF) and Kiden Grace Wani of the World Food Programme (WFP) in February and March 2018, and funded by the UK, Swiss, Canadian and Netherlands Donor Missions in South Sudan.

Cash-based programmes can help poor households address food insecurity, and to better manage by themselves some of the risks they face. Evidence from around the world suggests that this assistance approach can be implemented successfully in conflict-affected societies. In South Sudan, cash-based programmes include conditional and unconditional cash transfers, grants, bursaries and work schemes where beneficiaries receive financial resources in cash or vouchers which can be exchanged for goods in the local markets. These programmes are changing aid delivery, and the social context, towards new systems structured around local markets and local currency.
Cash-based programmes may interact with South Sudan’s conflicts, by channelling resources into the war economy, or burdening markets with demand which they cannot meet, or even by putting beneficiaries at risk of predatory violence. Cash-based aid also may impact traditional kinship and social safety networks. This study looks at interactions between cash-based programmes and conflict in three main areas:
– exchange rates, commodity prices and the macro-economy
– financial services, trade and the checkpoint economy
– local systems of production and exchange, including influence on kinship, markets, gender and ethnicity.