The Philippines' Social Amelioration Program started in March of 2020 sought to provide cash assistance to 18 million households. The first tranche of payments experienced significant delivery challenges, leading to changes in the second tranche. This case study aims to document lessons learned from the second tranche.
Anit Mukherjee 
cash transfer 
Colombia's Ingreso Solidario COVID-19 cash transfer program increased eligible households’ probability of maintaining an income source during the pandemic and did not disincentivize labor market participation.
Maintains
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic caused countries throughout the world to adapt their social protection systems to a radically new environment. This Maintains report uses literature reviews and informant interviews to document the social protection response in Kenya, evaluating it in terms of its adequacy, coverage, and comprehensiveness. As of its writing, the government of Kenya was expected to deliver social protection to over 700,000 households as part of...
Christina Lowe, Anna McCord, Rodolfo Beazley
The disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic complicated the delivery of social protection payments, while at the same time necessitating their use at unprecedented scale. Lowe, McCord, and Beazley analyze optimal approaches to distributing and expanding G2P transfers in 2020 by combining literature review with case studies of Nigeria, Peru, Sri Lanka, and Togo. Their findings highlight the importance of comprehensive ID systems, digital and financial inclusion, existing systems, and...
Alan Gelb , Anurodh Giri , Anit Mukherjee , Kritika Shukla , Mitul Thapliyal and Brian Webster
covid-19
The COVID-19 lockdown provides a test of whether these investments in digital infrastructure would pay off and help the government deliver relief quickly, efficiently and equitably.
Zoran Đoković, Tulimeke Munyika, Colin Muleke, William Muhwava, Hosea Mitala and Anette Bayer Forsingdal
This technical brief explains how Namibia was able to successfully execute its emergency program with remarkable efficiency, distributing a one-time benefit to 747,000 screened applicants, requiring only 72 hours to process each application. The case highlights the value of having invested in an integrated digital National Population Register, housing the Civil Registry and the ID Production System with a very high coverage, and linking it with other government electronic databases.
Doreen Ahimbisibwe and Anup Singh
MSC conducted a research study to assess what the low- and middle-income (LMI) segments in Uganda understand about COVID-19 in terms of awareness, preventive measures being taken, gender dynamics at play in their households, and the use of digital financial services during this time. We present our findings in this report.
