The Lesotho National Information System for Social Assistance: A tool for targeting the most in need with social assistance programmes

We meet Augustina Motaba in the foothills of the Mafeteng district of the Mountain Kingdom of Lesotho. Augustina is 36 years, and she comes from Sebelekoane Village in the Lehlakaneng Community Council of the district. She tells us that she is married and has two children, both boys. The oldest boy is 15 years and is in grade 9 in school, while the younger one is only one year old. Happy one-year-old Voeane goes everywhere with his mother as there is no one to look after him when Augustina is not around. 

Augustina’s household needs to provide information to MoSD personnel fed into the National Information System for Social Assistance (NISSA), NISSA database.

In 2009 the Government of Lesotho, through the Ministry of Social Development (MoSD), established the National Information System for Social Assistance (NISSA), a social registry where household information is recorded, and households are categorised based on their vulnerability level. NISSA contains information on over ninety percent of all households in Lesotho. The purpose of this household information system is to aid in identifying households in need of government support through social protection. The NISSA is regularly updated with new household data. In 2021, the updating exercise happened in a few selected Community Councils.

As part of the NISSA updating process, a few weeks earlier, Augustina’s village met with MoSD personnel to generate a new list of all households in the village that included old and new families. The village members had after that categorised every household into four categories: Able, Middle, Poor, and Ultra Poor. Augustina's household had been categorised as poor. All households categorised as poor and ultra-poor are the ones for which the data has to be updated in the NISSA. This is the first time for Augustina’s household to be included in NISSA since when it was done in the past, they were not living in the village. The village chief informed Augustina to attend the meeting so the MoSD personnel could capture her household data as part of the NISSA updating exercise. 

Augustina sits with MoSD personnel for about 15 minutes, answering the questions they ask her. The questions include confirming the number of household members, age, education level, and occupation. There are also questions on assets that the household owns, access to food, and the type of shelter they live in. Augustina responds to all the questions confidently and even provides her and her husband's IDs as well as the birth certificates of her two children. 

After this process is completed, we take time to chat with Augustina. She tells us that she had gone to school up to grade 7 when she dropped out. Augustina’s husband, as is true of many other Lesotho men, had previously gone to work in the mines in South Africa. However, he had to return home in 2013 because of poor health. The husband currently works for other people in the village herding their livestock. Augustina takes care of the household and the children.  

"We do not have any livestock of our own and we grow very few crops," Augustina tells us.  

Augustina’s household currently does not benefit from any social assistance programme but she tells us that one time in the past, they had received food parcels and money for school uniforms for the older son. When we ask her how she feels about being classified as poor, she says, “It is true that we are poor as we have no assets such as livestock and I feel that the process of categorising households in my village was fair.” 

Augustina also tells us that she did not only come to provide information for her household but that she had also come to represent her neighbor.“My neighbor is 56 years old and cannot walk long distances and she lives alone, so I also presented her case”. Augustina even brought the neighbor’s ID for the MoSD personnel to record. The neighbor who was categorised as ultra-poor currently is on a disability grant that the Government of Lesotho provides to those with severe disabilities. 

The NISSA database is key to supporting targeting for social assistance programmes and humanitarian response that can benefit Augustina’s household and her neighbor.  UNICEF with funding from the European Commission has supported the Government of Lesotho to develop the NISSA and ensure that its data is updated regularly.  Currently, the NISSA database has data for over 500,000 households which is over 90 percent of all households in Lesotho from both urban and rural areas.