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The Ghana National Household Registry (GNHR) project, which seeks to establish a single registry database of the poorest and most vulnerable households in the country, is scheduled to commence in the Upper West Region this month.
 
Sponsored by the World Bank, the $8 million project is a national exercise that will be piloted in the three northern regions.

Implemented by the GNHR, a unit under the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, the registry is expected to identify and profile poor and vulnerable households in Ghana.

Data generated from the exercise will be used to select beneficiaries of all social protection programmes in the country.

Objective

The objective is to help eliminate duplication of efforts and costs in social interventions, enhance the coordination of interventions across ministries, departments and agencies and rationalise the implementation of the hitherto fragmented social protection sector.

The National Coordinator of the Ghana Social Opportunities Project (GSOP), a Government of Ghana project funded by the World Bank, Mr Robert Austin, in an interview, explained that the GNHR was one of the three components of GSOP. 

The other components, he said, were to support the scaling up of the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty Programme (LEAP) and the implementation of the Labour Intensive Public Works (LIPW).

So far, 1,400 people, including district coordinators, enumerators and community focal persons drawn from all the 11 districts in the Upper West Region, have been engaged to undertake the project in the region.

As part of the preparation, the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection in March 31, 2016 entered into a contractual agreement with Genkey Solutions BV, a multinational provider of biometric solutions, to collect data from the field. 

Using an electronic data collection method, the exercise is expected to be paperless as preloaded tablets will be used to administer the questionnaire. 

The tablets to be employed have the capability to take photographs, scan fingerprints, scan ID cards and record the responses of households to the questions to be asked. 

Public education

Mr Austin said a public education campaign had begun in the Upper West Region to sensitise the public to the project and urged the people to participate in the registration exercise to facilitate the delivery of a credible Single National Registry that would inure to the benefit of all.

Reacting to whether the single registry would conflict with the national census expected to be conducted in 2020, the national coordinator explained that there was a vast difference between the two.

He further explained that while the main focus of the census was to do a headcount of people in the country, the Single Household Register was aimed solely at capturing the socio-economic characteristics of households and categorising them.

He also explained that the decision to use an electronic form of data collection was to ensure the integrity of the information gathered and facilitate its processing within the shortest possible time.