First we present the level of coverage of the intervention, followed by the effectiveness of the targeting, which will then be helpful in understanding the analysis of the processes.
Very low coverage
Table
1 presents the coverage of the targeting in the two neighbourhoods. The number of indigents retained by the COGESs was very low and similar in both neighbourhoods, at around three indigents per 1,000 inhabitants. While both COGESs followed the same rule dictated by national directives (spend a maximum of $400 per year for indigents), they also selected the number of indigents according to a general (and conservative) assessment of how much revenue their CSPS generated. As one COGES member explained: “Because we know … how much money the COGES has, that’s why our list is shorter”. The numbers of indigents pre-selected by the local selection committees, however, varied considerably. The qualitative data showed that the two neighbourhoods interpreted the definition of indigence differently at the start (see above).
Table 1
Coverage of indigent selection in the two sectors of Ouagadougou
Type of neighbourhood |
loti
|
non loti
|
Total number of inhabitants (2011) | 22,418 | 5,994 |
Number of local selection committees | 11 | 3 |
Number of indigents retained by local committees | 1 117 | 25 |
Coverage of targeting by local committees | 5% | 0.4% |
Number of COGESs | 1 | 1 |
Number of indigents retained by COGESs | 75 | 13 |
Coverage of targeting by COGESs | 0.33% | 0.22% |
In Kilwin, while some community selection volunteers retained the definition that had been provided for indigence, others defined it more broadly, using as selection criteria the inability to look after oneself when ill, food insecurity, or inadequate housing conditions. “When you see someone and you know things are not going well for him, you know [he’s indigent], the person doesn’t even have a good place to sleep, has nothing to eat, when you look at the person’s yard, you can sense it” (delegate, committee 8, Kilwin). Thus, in this formal neighbourhood, where the standard of living was comparable to the average in Ouagadougou, the definition applied was focused on basic needs.
In Polesgo, where the vast majority of inhabitants lived below the poverty line, as in rural areas, it was not feasible to distinguish indigents from others on the basis of unmet basic needs, given that most of the inhabitants were in that situation. The volunteers thus focused on the individual’s physical incapacity to generate income (disability, advanced age) combined with a total absence of family support. “We look at people who are disabled and have no material or financial support at all…. They can’t work, and there is absolutely no way they can look after themselves when they are ill because they have nothing at all and no one to help them” (delegate, committee 1, Polesgo).
The very selective nature of the Polesgo neighbourhood volunteers’ selection process was confirmed by their later reflection in hindsight: “There were indigents we didn’t include on the list simply because we considered their situation to be less serious than those of the others we selected, but today we see that we should have included them as well, because some of these people are really suffering” (delegate, committee 2, Polesgo).
Differences in effectiveness between neighbourhoods
Of the 88 indigents selected by both the local committees and the COGESs, 65 (78.3%) were included in the analysis of effectiveness. This attrition in numbers was related to the mobility of this unstable urban population, and in one case, to death. Individuals (and households) are only entered into the Ouaga HDSS database, by definition, after six months of residence, whereas not all indigents stay put for six months; indeed, some selected indigents left the sector before receiving their card. Moreover, information on household goods was only available for households that the Ouaga HDSS was able to survey when it passed through in 2011 (91.3% of households), which also reduced the number of indigents included in the effectiveness analysis.
Table
2 shows that the level of poverty among people selected in Polesgo was higher than the mean level of the poor who were not selected. The indigents had none of the previously mentioned goods (motorbike, automobile, television, refrigerator). Their households also had fewer mobile phones (63%) than did other poor households (88%), but slightly more bicycles (100% vs. 91.6%). The indigents selected in Polesgo were more often elderly, more often female, and lived more often in households headed by women. They were rarely engaged in economic activity (17% vs. 66% for all the poor), and when they were, it was always in the informal sector (such as gathering and selling sand). The selected indigents were all uneducated, compared with 65% of persons classified as “poor” in Polesgo. The indigents’ characteristics were a function of the definition of indigence used; indeed, it is most often the elderly, women, and people with no education who are afflicted by incapacitating disabilities or social isolation.
Table 2
Selected indigents’ characteristics compared with those of the non-selected poor
Individual characteristics
| | | | | | |
Mean age | 58.2 (55.0–61.4) | 36.1 (35.4–36.8) | 0 | 48.9 (30.8–66.9) | 36.5 (35.8–37.2) | 0.01 |
% of people aged 60 years and older | 40.4 (27.6–53.1) | 7.4 (6.1–8.8) | 0 | 12.5 (0.0–40.2) | 7.3 (5.9–8.6) | 0.57 |
% of females | 49.1 (36.1–62.1) | 51.4 (48.8–54.0) | 0.73 | 62.5 (22.0–100) | 48.6 (46.0–51.3) | 0.43 |
% people without education | 82.1 (72.1–92.2) | 50.0 (50.4–55.6) | 0 | 100 | 64.8 (62.3–67.3) | 0.07 |
% of people without activity | 53.6 (40.0–66.6) | 38.3 (35.8–40.9) | 0.02 | 83.3 (52.2–100) | 33.5 (31.0–36.0) | 0.01 |
% of people engaged in the informal sector | 39.3 (26.5–52.1) | 40.3 (37.7–42.8) | 0.88 | 16.7 (0.0–47.9) | 43.9 (41.3–46.5) | 0.18 |
% of people employed in the private sector | 7.1 (0.4–13.9) | 15.1 (13.2–17.0) | 0.1 | 0 | 20.0 (17.9–22.1) | 0.22 |
Household characteristics
| | | | | | |
% of households with a bicycle | 40.3 (27.0–53.1) | 83.2 (81.2–85.1) | 0 | 100 | 91.6 (90.2–93.1) | 0.39 |
% of households with a motorbike | 50.9 (37.9–63.8) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
% of households with a television set | 21.0 (10.5–31.6) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
% of households with a refrigerator | 1.8 (1.6–5.2) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
% of households with a phone (mobile) | 91.2 (83.9–98.6) | 91.6 (90.2–93.1) | 0.91 | 62.5 (22.0–100) | 87.6 (85.8–89.3) | 0.03 |
% of households with mud-brick houses | 35.1 (22.7–47.5) | 30.8 (28.4–33.2) | 0.49 | 100 | 97.9 (97.2–98.7) | 0.68 |
% of households headed by women | 29.8 (17.9–41.7) | 24.2 (22.0–26.5) | 0.34 | 37.5 (0.0–78.0) | 16.3 (14.4–18.3) | 0.11 |
In Kilwin, compared with the poor as a whole in that neighbourhood, the selected indigents were also more often elderly, without economic activity (54% vs. 38%), and uneducated (82% vs. 50%). However, women were not overly represented among the indigents, and the selected indigents had noticeably more goods than the poor as a whole in that sector: 51% of the selected indigents’ households had a motorbike, 21% had a television, and 2% had a refrigerator, while the poor households had none of these items. The selected indigents lived in households that had just as many mobile phones as did the other poor households.
The role of social relationships in the selection process
Contrary to Polesgo (non loti neighbourhood), a portion of the indigents selected in Kilwin (loti neighbourhood) were thus not among the worst-off in the sector, if we consider goods owned by the households. These results can have several explanations.
First, the names submitted to the COGES in Kilwin were not listed in any order of degree of indigence. As we saw earlier, the volunteers in Kilwin (contrary to those in Polesgo) interpreted the definition of indigence more variably, resulting in a certain heterogeneity in the indigents selected. The COGES had no way of making any informed choices among these different categories of indigents and therefore did not systematically retain the worst-off in the proposed lists.
Then, in Kilwin, some of the local committees admitted they sometimes made selections based on incomplete information.
“Very often there were people [about whom] we couldn’t get certain information, particularly whether there were any other people who helped them” (delegate, committee 8, Kilwin). In other local committees, members did not actually know the inhabitants of their own neighbourhood, and so were unable to produce a list of indigents through mutual consultation, as they were supposed to do. Contravening the rules set out at the start of the intervention, some committees roamed across their sector, asking questions in every household. Alerted by the operation, some residents biased their responses.
“There were some people who might tell us they had no help, when that wasn’t the case. Since we listed people based on what they told us, I can’t say with certainty that all the people we selected were actually people who had no assistance” (delegate, committee 7, Kilwin). On top of that, the members of the COGES who were charged with finalizing the list of indigents also hardly knew the inhabitants of their neighbourhood, which was very large.
“Since we don’t know all these people, we asked [a selection committee] to give us a shorter list with only ten people, since they’re the ones who know each other, and we were overwhelmed” (COGES representative, Kilwin) [
40].
In contrast, the local selection committees in Polesgo were made up of people from the village that had been originally settled along the boundary of Ouagadougou city, and which had only recently become integrated into the capital as a result of the gradual advance of non loti settlements over several years. Even though committee members’ knowledge about the newer residents was not perfect, it was still quite good. “I was born in this sector and have been here ever since. I’m a native of this place and now I’m 32 years old. Because of this, I think I know this sector pretty well, even if there are always new people arriving in the non loti area. The other members … I’ve known them all a long time because we live in this sector together, they know the area as well as I do” (delegate, committee 1, Polesgo).
In Kilwin, aside from problems related to people being unknown to members, the operation was also tainted by several cases of collusion. Thus, we noted, for instance, that sometimes indigents were all concentrated in the immediate neighbourhood of a delegate to the local selection committee. Elsewhere, committee members themselves and their families were placed on the lists of indigents. Members of committees in this neighbourhood also reported being under great pressure to put certain people on the lists—pressure that was no doubt exacerbated by the lack of discretion that characterized the operation. Thus, in some committees, selection was a matter of accommodation to avoid tension with their populations, as illustrated by this case experienced by a delegate:
“There was a woman who approached another member of the committee to demand to be put on the list, and my colleague came to me to explain, so I told him to put her on the list, and if she was retained, that would be her luck as well. If not, she was a retired civil servant and her husband also was a retired civil servant, but he had recently passed away, and she continued to receive both pensions. With all that, she wanted to be on the list, and because we didn’t want any trouble, we did it” (delegate, committee 11, Kilwin).
The way in which these neighbourhood committees were set up no doubt helped facilitate the emergence of such cases of collusion. In Kilwin, it was difficult to identify volunteers to serve on the local selection committees, just as these volunteers then found it difficult to identify indigents. Thus, it was decided to identify only the delegates to each committee, and to ask them to assemble their own committee of volunteers. Sometimes the delegate was the only one who was active.
In Polesgo, on the other hand, the members of the local selection committees were all designated by Ouaga HDSS community liaison agents. Because of this, the members themselves exercised a certain amount of control over their committee’s functioning. These members had all been designated by a third party (the liaison agent), they were active, and they were able to contradict each other. Thus, in Polesgo, some names were eliminated from the proposed list of indigents during internal committee deliberations because members felt they were questionable. As well, in Polesgo the COGES provided a further level of control; for instance, the nurse reported having crossed a suspected case of collusion off the list submitted by the committees [
41].