What are feasible lead times to deliver CVA to recipients in the Horn of Africa? What are the barriers and enablers to ensuring a timely and high quality humanitarian response? What does it take for organizations to be effectively prepared? Evaluation after evaluation in the Horn of Africa, over the years, have said that drought responses are late – it’s rare that the need for faster action isn’t one of the recommendations. But with no benchmark of what is actually possible, this begs a question – how fast can a response realistically be? In Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia, the use of cash and voucher assistance has a relatively long and solid track record. CVA has been used at scale since the Somalia drought response in 2011-2012; social protection systems are expanding; there is widespread use of mobile money; and a CVA aware humanitarian community exists.