By Kizito Makoye

KOROGWE, Tanzania

Zainab Mkendo looks gaunt and weak even though she’s just 44. Her pale skin and the stitches on her tattered gown say it all. She is poor.

A widow, she lives in a mud-walled house with her three children in a village next to a highway in Korogwe, Tanzania.

She is among hundreds of women from families considered extremely poor who have been chosen to receive cash payments as part of a government effort to help lift citizens from the quagmires of poverty.

Mkendo got a 355,000-Tanzanian shillings ($166) grant which she used to set up a small food vending facility selling a range of local dishes including rice, vegetables, meat, chicken and ugali (a flour dish) to travelers on the highway so she can earn a regular income.

“This business has lifted my life. Even if I experience a bad harvest I am sure of bringing something to the table dinner table,” she tells Anadolu Agency.

Although she has now the means of financial security, Mkendo, whose husband died of HIV/AIDS three years ago, still lives in a dilapidated two-bedroom shack. Her two sons, aged 18 and 16, share a three-and-a-half-by-six-foot spring bed in one of the rooms.

Mkendo sleeps in the other room with her daughter aged four. Dusty old clothes are hanging on the wall. Chicken droppings litter the mud floor.

“I have many plans to lift my life up. With the help of God I will succeed” she says.

Grants

More than 5,000 families in Korogwe district have received financial aid to improve their living conditions under the government’s conditional cash transfer initiative by the Tanzania Social Action Fund (TASAF).

“I get a lot of customers here. As you can see this is a busy area,” Mkendo says.

On average she can generate a profit of 35,000 shillings ($16) in a day.

In the neighboring Kikwembe village, Mtumwa Kisamwo – who, at one point could hardly afford food for her grandchildren -- is also happy to qualify for the grant.

“I am very happy to receive this assistance. It has helped me a lot to solve my problems,” she says.

The frail-looking 61-year-old has joined a women's cooperative processing and packaging cassava, a root crop. She receives a monthly dividend from the sales which she uses to meet the growing needs of her grandchildren.

“School fees were the biggest headache but I am glad the government has abolished [them],” she said.

Kisamwo, whose group grows, processes, packages cassava and sells it as far away as Dar es Salaam saves her profits for future use.

Because of the high birth rate, most residents of Korogwe are unable to care for their children. Men often abandon their families and children to avoid the financial burden, local village officials said.

Through the fund, more than 6.6 million Tanzanians considered to be extremely poor and food insecure have benefited from a cash transfer of $200 million in new funding from the World Bank.

Manuel Salazar, the World Bank’s Lead Social Protection Specialist, said cash transfers were an effective instrument to lift poor and vulnerable households out of poverty

“They are more cost-effective and efficient than food or other types of aid,” he said.

Cash transfers can easily be scaled up to provide assistance to millions in short amounts of time and with minimal effort, he added.

Launched in 2000, the program targets marginalized people and poor households across the country.

Yohana Shekimweri, the local fund coordinator in Korogwe, said about 7,000 poor households in the district have benefited.

“This money is not a donation per se. We want these people to create sustainable income generating activities that will help them for the rest of their lives," he said.

The program targets people living under the poverty line of $1 a day, which according to Tanzania Bureau of Statistics data, includes 13.5 million people across the country.

According to fund officials, the third phase of the project aims to reach a million direct beneficiaries by 2020 from a previous target of 275,000 poor households by the end of 2017.