The Food Security Programme in Ethiopia and the Vision 2020 Umurenge Programme in Rwanda deliver a combination of consumption support (cash or food transfers, Public Works employment) and livelihood support (asset packages, microfinance) with the objective of ‘graduating’ rural households out of food insecurity and poverty into self-reliant livelihoods. This article presents perspectives on graduation of influential stakeholders in Ethiopia and Rwanda, and draws conclusions from these case studies for global graduation debates. Our qualitative research reveals a diversity of opinions about the complexity of factors that enable or constrain sustainable graduation. These relate partly to programme design, but also to implementation issues and the different national and subnational economic, political and agroecological contexts within which programmes operate. The alignment of graduation with broader development goals makes investment in these programmes attractive to donors as well as governments, but risks introducing excessive political pressure to demonstrate ‘success’.