Harnessing data and digital tools to strengthen social protection

Zawya

a day ago

Long viewed as a fallback for hard times, social protection is now being reimagined as a driver of resilience. With rising costs, widening inequality, and fragile economies, governments are searching for ways to make every policy choice count.
These challenges brought policymakers from Africa, Asia, and the Pacific to Livingstone, Zambia, from 8 to 10 July, where they focused on targeted refinements and applied approaches to strengthen social protection.
The gathering centered on hands-on methods: tools, data, and policy strategies that help governments respond to poverty, economic shocks, and climate threats with greater precision. It formed part of a broader UN effort to promote universal, adaptive, and inclusive social protection systems worldwide.
Zambia, the host, is contending with drought-linked hunger and soaring living costs. The Maldives faces logistical hurdles in delivering services across 187 dispersed islands. Tanzania is navigating population pressures, youth unemployment, and informality. Each delegation brought its own realities, but the drive for smarter systems was shared.
The Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) introduced a suite of empirical tools, including ECA's multidimensional poverty dashboard and ESCAP's evidence-based targeting models, to help governments sharpen decisions using locally relevant data.
Christian Oldiges, Chief of Social Policy at ECA, described the tool as a bridge between data and delivery. "It shows not just where the poor are, but what kind of poverty they face, and how existing schemes measure up."
Selahattin Selsah Pasali, Social Affairs Officer at ESCAP, said member states such as Cambodia and the Maldives value the tools' flexibility and training support, 'which helps localize and institutionalize them.' Many, he noted, are now considering a shit from survey data to administrative records to better design policies and estimate costs.
Namibia shared progress digitizing its social grant system. Malawi, a global champion for the Social Protection Accelerator, is rolling out a new policy rooted in a lifecycle approach that addresses risks across age groups.
Tanzania is widening its model too. Frank Kilimba from the Office of the Prime Minister said: "We're expanding beyond contribution-based systems to ensure broader coverage, especially for informal and rural populations."
Rwanda was among the countries exchanging experiences. Ariane Mugisha, Chief Digital Officer in the Local Government Sector, said the sessions on social registries and data integration offered key insights into building adaptive systems. Her colleague Joel Murenzi, Social Protection Policy Advisor at the Ministry of Local Government, highlighted the importance of learning from others' approaches to expanding coverage and adjusting benefit levels in line with inflation.
Behind the mix of countries, organizers said, was an intentional effort to draw from diverse settings. "We brought together small island states like the Maldives and middle-income countries like Namibia with least developed economies such as Malawi and Zambia," said Amson Sibanda, Chief of Service at the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA). "Their challenges differ, but their commitment to reform creates a space for grounded exchange."
That reality, said Mamusa Siyunyi, Social Affairs Officer at ECA, makes targeted support all the more essential. "It's not just the triple crisis of food, fuel and finance," she said. "It's demographic pressure, climate risk, and limited fiscal space. Countries need support that's relevant and usable."
Several delegates requested additional training and ongoing technical assistance. Others stressed the need to bridge institutional divides that hinder implementation.
"We have the data, but making it useful means working across silos," said Hudha Haleem of the Maldives Bureau of Statistics. "The big takeaway for me was how collaboration between data producers and programme implementers can make systems more responsive and inclusive."
Fathimath Nisha Fahmy from the Maldives Pension Office agreed, adding that geographic realities demand precise, adaptive systems. "Using real-time data to target and adapt social protection is critical for countries like ours, spread across many islands."
Mr. Sibanda underscored the need to match innovation with institutional readiness. "We always say that policymakers should be able to leverage the science-policy interface to make good decisions and future-proof their strategies," he said. "But for that to happen, public institutions need the capacity to harness these tools and understand both their benefits and potential pitfalls."
As countries prepare for a series of global forums on social development, the Livingstone meeting formed part of a wider push to build systems that are better designed, better resourced, and better able to reach those most at risk.
"Policymakers don't just need inspiration," said Mr. Oldiges. "They need proof points, blueprints, and allies. That's what we came here to build."
The three-day interregional workshop was organized by UN DESA, ECA, and ESCAP in collaboration with the government of Zambia. It brought together officials from eight countries across Africa and Asia-Pacific with a shared aim to build smarter, more resilient social protection systems that lift people sustainably, not just catch them when they fall.
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA).