Sustainable Life Services for the Poor

Voicing Critical Service Requirements
Annotating Personal Histories
Disintermediation

A rights-based service approach

In Africa, millions of marginalised and displaced people are unable to exercise their rights to social services. Social grants provide a vital trickle of income. The small increases in local revenues through child benefit, old age pension and other grants help to unlock local economies. Altogether, these small economies form a huge potential market for private goods and services tailored to the poor¹.

The uptake of social transfers is minimal: in South Africa only 20 per cent of the child support grant is successfully claimed. On average, uptake across all social grants is 43 per cent. These figures mask a huge disparity between urban (poor) and rural (very poor) areas. Some 60 per cent of the poor in South Africa, or 11 million people, mostly in rural areas, are without any social security transfers. Yet, if all benefits were distributed to those entitled, poverty in South Africa would be reduced by more than one-third.

Even LDC countries such as Lesotho and Malawi allocate significant resources to social grants aimed at poverty alleviation. Unfortunately, the poor rarely manage to obtain any. In Lesotho a proportion of the funds earned by the highland water scheme is intended to be distributed to all citizens. In practice very little percolates through. In many LDC's the national budgets for poverty alleviation grants and services are supplemented or covered through foreign aid. Combined a massive budget is available in Africa for poverty alleviation services.

How can poor communities draw down the vast resources that are earmarked nationally and internationally for poverty alleviation?

The primary impediments to efficient and effective social transfers are lack of personal records and unfamiliarity with administrative bureaucracies. Moreover, centralised government systems have difficulties reconciling the demands for accountability with the massive immediate needs of destitute populations.

An Open Services approach turns the service paradigm on its head by empowering the most vulnerable groups with the tools and information they need to draw down essential social services. These include child benefit grants, medication schemes, learning and bursary plans, micro-franchise/micro-aid, old age pensions, and more.  We call them life services, a term borrowed from health care.

We aim to tackle the major service bottlenecks in a three-pronged communication centred approach:

• Voicing pro-poor service requirements: articulating fine-grained life services requirements and definitions by the poor and the vulnerable. This stage also deals with the development of communication skills in preparation for the next stage;

• Building 'digital identities or 'personal histories': documenting personal assets for individuals and family groups. Personal histories serve to communicate entitlements, experiences and achievements. They are key in allowing access to secure services; and

• Disintermediation: removing the layers of complexity and cost, that prevent affordable direct access, by creating digital 'shortcuts' to public and private service providers.

1Following the BOP (Bottom of the Pyramid) principles, collaboration between poor communities, government, civil society organisations and the private sector can create vibrant local economic activity that is at the heart of the solution to poverty.

Does this approach interest you, would you like to find more?  Please contact Michael.Jenkins AT metalab.co.uk