The Hunger Safety Net Programme provides a safety net for pastoralists living in chronic poverty in the four Kenyan counties of Turkana, Marsabit, Mandera and Wajir. The programme provides regular, predictable cash transfers to 100,000 beneficiary households. Additionally, the programme provides humanitarian support to an additional 274,000 beneficiary households during drought emergency through its scalability mechanism.
In 2014, a consortium consisting of DAI Europe, the prime contract holder; Development Pathways and Matrix were contracted by UKAID to manage the second phase of the HSNP through the Programme Implementation and Learning Unit. The primary aim was to building the capacity of the National Drought Management Authority to implement the programme within three years.
Development Pathways provided two consultants responsible for the design and execution of operations and a management information system (MIS). We also provided short-term consultants who helped develop the operational manual and define the MIS strategy.
With this input, HSNP2 has been able to provide beneficiary and non-beneficiary households with bank accounts, make regular and predictable bi-monthly payments to beneficiaries and develop a scalability mechanism that enables it to make top-up payments to regular beneficiary households and emergency transfers to non-beneficiary households during droughts. Underpinning efficient programme operations is its MIS, which received an open data award under the category for Public Institutions.
Besides maintaining a database of all registered households in four counties, HSNP MIS is designed with a strong decentralised case management function and a robust reporting and dashboard function that enables the stakeholders to track progress of the programme on a real-time basis. We also developed an SMS-based platform for recipients to receive information about, and query the status of, their transfers.