The Economic Recovery sector is one of DRC’s four core sectors of intervention. Its overall objective is to support conflict- and displacement-affected individuals and households in meeting their essential needs, while empowering them to regain self-reliance and build their resilience. This enables them to mitigate, adapt to and recover from shocks and stresses in a manner that reduces chronic vulnerability.
The sector primarily focuses on supporting people’s capacity to subsist (produce for self-consumption) or generate income and other economic assets in a safe, dignified, and resilient manner.
The ultimate goal is to reduce dependency on external aid and foster long-term, dignified solutions.
3 Sub-Sectors of Economic Recovery
The overall sector objective is achieved via three interconnected sub-sectors, namely:
Food security activities ensure that individuals and households have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food.
Achieving food security outcomes fundamentally requires a holistic, integrated multi-sectoral approach. DRC’s Economic Recovery programming contributes to achieving Food Security through a combination of two broad categories of intervention:
On the demand side, interventions that support the capacity of individuals and households to meet their basic food needs by ensuring that they have both the economic means to access foods (e.g. through consumption support) and the physical means to access relevant commodity markets;
On the supply side, interventions that ensure that critical market systems and value chains that support basic food needs are functional, resilient to shocks, and responsive to needs in crisis or displacement contexts (e.g. through support to regenerative practices in local agricultural production and natural resource management).
Financial inclusion activities ensure that individuals and businesses have effective access to useful, affordable, and adapted financial products and services (e.g. transactions, payments, savings, credit, loans, and insurance) and that these financial products and services are delivered in a responsible, inclusive and sustainable way.
DRC’s Economic Recovery programming contributes to achieving Financial Inclusion through a combination of two types of interventions:
On the demand side, working with individuals, households, and communities on access, knowledge, understanding, and use of such financial products and services (e.g. through financial literacy trainings);
On the supply side, working through formal (e.g. banks, Microfinance Institutions, etc.) and informal providers (e.g. Village Loans and Savings Associations, brokers, etc.) to ensure that the relevant financial products and services are available, affordable, and where relevant, adapted to the needs of displacement-affected people.
Decent livelihoods activities ensure that individuals and households have the means to cover their needs and the needs of their household through diversified income streams stemming from sustainable and decent work.
Livelihoods interventions are about protecting, replacing or facilitating access of vulnerable individuals and households to resources (human, physical, financial, social, natural) that they can use to subsist and/or generate an income.
DRC recognises that all sources of livelihoods are not equally desirable and promotes the development of diversified livelihoods opportunities that are decent and sustainable, whether in formal or informal labor markets.
As an intermediary step, DRC’s livelihoods interventions can also comprise emergency livelihoods interventions that facilitate access to immediate, temporary income through wage employment opportunities or other income-generating activities.
DRC’s Economic Recovery programming contributes to achieving sustainable and decent livelihoods through a combination of two types of interventions:
On the demand side, providing employment support to individuals and households through developing human and social productive capabilities (e.g. life and technical skills, social networks, practical experience) and supporting their access to physical, natural, and financial productive assets (e.g. natural resources, tools, equipment, etc.) that will help them effectively access agricultural and non-agricultural labor markets, either through wage employment or self-employment.
On the supply side, generating decent and sustainable employment opportunities for vulnerable populations affected by displacement through (a) business support, by working with micro, small, and medium businesses (MSMEs) that are starting up or scaling up their activities, (b) market systems and value chain development, by working with the private sector in sectors and markets with potential for employment, and ensuring that the market environment is conducive to the employment of people of concern by supporting, strengthening, or developing specific actors, infrastructures, support functions, norms, and regulations; (c) decent work promotion, working with individual employers to ensure that the work opportunities that are available are decent and sustainable.
Cash and Voucher Assistance (CVA)
Cash and Voucher Assistance (CVA) is DRC’s primary humanitarian response method, implemented across multiple sectors (e.g. cash for protection, rent and food).
Where feasible and appropriate, DRC recognizes CVA as the most efficient and effective way to provide people affected by conflict and displacement with direct access to resources, enabling them to meet their basic needs or achieve other sectoral outcomes.
This approach involves providing cash or vouchers directly to individuals, households or communities.
Although the Economic Recovery team hosts the technical expertise at global and country levels, CVA - including Multi-Purpose Cash (MPC) - is cross-sectoral transfer modality and not limited to Economic Recovery activities.
In line with its Value Compass, DRC’s CVA is committed to maximizing flexibility and efficiency by minimizing conditions and restrictions, to ensure principled and effective assistance that prioritizes dignity, choice, and empowerment for affected populations.
Systems Approaches for sustainable and scalable impact
Achieving Economic Recovery outcomes necessitates the consideration and incorporation in program design of various social, cultural, political, environmental and other relevant factors that influence an individual or household’s economic recovery. Such considerations inform programming that frequently involves a combination of individual-, household-, community- and systems-level interventions.
Systems Approaches are core to ensuring DRC and its partners can deliver sustainable and scale economic recovery outcomes. These approaches focus on understanding and addressing the interconnected functions that enable markets and value exchange. Rather than providing direct aid alone, it seeks to strengthen the underlying structures that influence how goods and services flow.
By analysing system-wide constraints and engaging local market actors, interventions can address root causes and deliver faster, more relevant, and cost-effective support that strengthens systems and ensures lasting, scalable impact.
