Social protection is important in driving rural transformation and ensuring its inclusiveness. The policies of social protection – defined as a set of interrelated public policies and interventions implemented to reduce poverty, vulnerability and risk – via universal and targeted social interventions have the potential to enhance the capacity of vulnerable groups to participate in their communities’ economic, social and political life. Equally important, to the extent that they enhance the participation of often marginalized groups – smallholder farmers, women, landless labourers and indigenous groups – they can be crucial drivers of inclusive rural transformation. Yet social protection is not enough in isolation to drive rural transformation. It must be combined with suitable macroeconomic policies, decentralized governance and institutional structures, and public–private investments in rural infrastructure, in particular smallholder agriculture.