Background

The Government of The Gambia has received IDA funding equivalent to US$30 million to implement ‘The Gambia Social Safety Net Project (GSSNP)’. The project has become effective on the 9^th of September 2019 and is expected to close on 29^th March 2024.

The original Project Development Objective (PDO) was “to improve the coordination of social assistance activities and increase inclusion of the extreme poor in the Nafa Program”. To enable the Government to respond to COVID-19, this PDO has however been revised to “improve the coordination of social assistance activities and increase access to the Nafa program for rural households.” The Project consists of three components.

Component 1: Development of Co-ordination Mechanisms for the Social Assistance Sector. This component will provide mechanisms and systems to help the coordination of social assistance activities in The Gambia through two subcomponents.

Component 1A: Support to the establishment of a Social Protection Secretariat (SPS). SPS’s mandate will be to provide leadership and coordination across the totality of social protection efforts in The Gambia.

Component 1B:  Support for the establishment of a Social Registry to provide robust data on key household characteristics to facilitate common assessment and eligibility determination for social assistance programmes. It will provide a platform for improved coordination and reduced fragmentation among programs.

The component would be implemented by the Secretariat, housed in the Office of the Vice President.

Component 2: The Nafa Program of cash transfers and social and behavioral change communication (SBCC) for the extreme poor.

The Nafa program was intended to provide an unconditional cash transfer for three years, initially in the poorest 20 districts in The Gambia, targeted to extreme poor households, covering approximately 15,606 extremely poor households (170,000 individuals). This equates to approximately 40 percent of the extreme poor households in The Gambia. The regular revenue provided to extreme poor households is aimed at both increasing short-term consumption of essential goods and services, and enabling longer-term investments in human and productive capital. This program is being adapted to respond to COVID-19 and the new, temporary cash transfer is being called Nafa Quick.  The Nafa Program shall be understood to encompass both the regular Nafa  and Nafa Quick.

Tailored SBCC that accompanies the cash transfer will provide information to beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries to encourage investments that can bolster human capital (especially maternal and child health and nutrition education, adolescence education and family planning, parenting and gender-based violence) and productive capital (especially savings, entrepreneurship and agriculture) to break the inter-generational cycle of poverty.

The Nafa program (component 2) will be implemented by three government partners; The National Nutrition Agency (NaNA) as the lead implementing agency and will establish performance contracts with the Department of Community Development (DCD) of the Ministry of Lands and Regional Government and the Department for Social Welfare (DSW) of the Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare for the activities that fall within their mandates.

Component 3: Project Management and Capacity Building This component will finance the costs associated with the management of the project and capacity building activities.

A Management Information System (MIS) for the Nafa Program (component 2) is needed to manage the intake of beneficiaries, delivery of benefits to them, generate payment lists, and other beneficiary management features, as well as to provide clear, simple reports on these activities.

Use of openIMIS

2M Corp, a Gambian software development is responsible to design and develop the registration, enrolment and payment modules of the MIS for the Nafa Program and to provide technical assistance to National Nutrition Agency (NaNA) to manage and operate the MIS.  Specifically, 2M Corp was tasked with the:

1. Design and develop the household registration, enrolment, and payments modules of the MIS for the Nafa Program

2. Development of user and technical manuals, standard procedures, and guidelines for maintaining the database related to the developed modules

In addition to the software development, 2M Corp is also responsible for:

1. Providing end-user training to the project implementation teams

2. Carry out corrective and adaptive maintenance to improve the software application when necessary during the contracting period