NISSA, The National Social Registry

Highlights

• Despite progress, about half the population of Lesotho still lives in monetary poverty, which is about a million people. Child monetary poverty also stands at 44.8 per cent and multidimensional poverty at 45.5 per cent.
• The government of Lesotho has been enhancing its social protection system, strengthening the integration, efficiency and credibility of the system.
• A social registry, NISSA, that contains up-to-date data on 90 per cent of the Lesotho household, can be used directly for targeting. Currently, some of the key programmes use NISSA, such as the Child Grants Programme, OVC-Bursary and the Public Assistance programme.
• NISSA includes a process called Proxy Means Test, through which the vulnerable households are categorized into four poverty levels. These poverty categories for each households are vetted by the community and it allows any social assistance programme to target and enroll the most vulnerable into their programmes without any additional cost and time in targeting.

Publication date

August 2022

Languages

English