2025 Impact Stories – Cash Assistance Helping Families Meet Essential Needs in Ethiopia

Ethiopia’s overlapping crises of conflict, climate shocks, and displacement have left families struggling to meet basic needs, prompting the use of cash based assistance as a flexible humanitarian response. This Impact Story presents the experience and results of the Ethiopia Cash Consortium’s Multi Purpose Cash Assistance (MPCA) programme implemented between June 2023 and April 2025 across 51 districts in seven regions. The programme reached 313,826 people—exceeding targets by 42%—and demonstrated significant improvements in household wellbeing: access to essential needs increased from 20% to 63%, acceptable food consumption rose from 1.7% to 32%, harmful coping strategies declined, and child separation rates fell below targets. Digitally enabled delivery through the Red Rose platform reduced transfer times from weeks to days and achieved very high beneficiary satisfaction, while community based targeting and unrestricted cash strengthened dignity and women’s decision making. These findings highlight the effectiveness of digitally enabled, consortium led MPCA in delivering rapid, accountable, and scalable impact in complex emergencies, and provide evidence to inform child responsive and shock responsive social protection in Ethiopia and similar contexts.