Members of the Ghana Productive Safety Net Project Team
THE MINISTRY of Gender, Children, and Social Protection (MoGCSP) has announced that it is exploring mobile money payment options for LEAP beneficiaries in the country.
The ministry, which already uses the E-Zwich card as a mode of payment to beneficiaries, says this option is being explored in order to aid in the efficiency of social protection delivery in the country.
Deputy Minister of MoGCSP, Zuweira Abudu, disclosed this at a Ghana Productive Safety Net Project Learning event held in Accra.
She stated that with the support from the World Bank, the ministry had taken the lead to improve digitalisation in the sector by implementing a digital grievance redress mechanism known as ‘The Single Window Citizens Engagement Service (SWCES) – Helpline of Hope,’ which receives the complaints of citizenry and creates a unified complaints and grievance mechanism for Social Protection Programmes in the country.
The theme of the event, “Leveraging Digitisation for Effective Social Protection Delivery – The Ghana Case Study,” was applauded by the minister, who stressed that the advancement of digitisation in social protection would aid in the inclusion of the extreme poor and vulnerable in national development.
“I believe that having a robust and digitised system for social protection delivery really helps in the reduction of poverty and inequality. We, therefore, need to invest more and leverage on digitisation for effective social protection delivery to close existing coverage gaps and reduce poverty, vulnerability and inequality.”
World Bank Country Director for Ghana, Liberia, and Sierra Leone Pierre Laporte, expressed his excitement with the ministry for their continuous growth in digitisation and promised that the World Bank would continue supporting the ministry to achieve optimum social protection in the country.
“My team tells me that in 2012, LEAP cash transfers were monitored using paper which was stored in a building at the headquarters. Today, all services are inputted and tracked by a virtual management information system, which allows the minister, by the click of a button, to know what is happening on the ground. The World Bank will continue to be a committed partner to Ghana and African countries by convening various stakeholders, providing regional and global knowledge, and financial support, which will together enable us to build together,” he shared.
The event marked the closing of the first phase of the Ghana Productive Safety Net Project (GPSNP) which began in 2018 and ceases in December 2022. GPSNP was implemented by the Government, in collaboration with the World Bank and Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), UK, in efforts to help eradicate poverty and vulnerability through improved social protection systems to citizens and to strengthen safety net systems that improve the productivity of the extreme poor.
The first phase of the project has succeeded in providing short-term employment to over 34,500 poor persons through LIPW, has linked about 16,000 beneficiaries to the ongoing Government’s flagship agriculture programmes, and disbursed GHS100.33 million to beneficiaries as grants for IGA start up and wages for services provided.
Although the first phase of GPSNP has ended, the second phase is set to begin later this year and end in 2025.
BY Abigail Atinuke Seyram Adeyemi & Nafisatu Abdul Razak