Work-safe Avoid Poverty (WSAP)

informal workers work in an unsafe environment without health and safety measures or mechanisms put in place to mitigate fatalities that result from accidents during their work delivery. This has contributed largely to incapacitating informal workers and eventually, resulting into poverty. WSAP is designed to create a technological platform using a transparent process to collect contribution from informal workers while integrating them into the national employment injury scheme with an integrated claim mechanism and access to free legal service. There is an alternative for non-technological user using our partnership with local cooperatives and unions. The platform also provides the opportunity for client of informal workers to make contribution on their behalf. When scaled, it will stop over 50 million West Africans from falling into daily poverty due to incapacitation resulting from work accident as they can gain access to rehabilitation and compensation which helps to stay out of poverty.

In spite of the success been made around the world, especially in developed economies on occupational accident prevention, a study conducted by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (2010), suggest occupational risk are among the Ten leading risk for disease and disability all over the world. A developing country like Nigeria has also tried to improve safety at work with the introduction of the employee compensation scheme; although, this scheme is focused more on the aftermath of an accident rather than prevention, it currently exclude the informal sector which comprises of about 65% of its work force. This group of people represents the most vulnerable workforces, as they work in hazardous environment without any form of social protection. Lack of mechanisms to include the informal sector in the employment injury scheme due to inability to collect contribution, informal nature of the sector and lack of trust in governance has left many informal workers without access to health, rehabilitation and compensation to mitigate effect of work accident. This has contributed largely to incapacitating informal workers and eventually, resulting into poverty.

The informal sector workers are mostly small scale businessmen and women as well as those in the construction, mechanical, agriculture, just to mention a few, who are usually not organized and regulated. This group of people represents the most vulnerable workforce, as they work in hazardous environment without any form of social protection.  Our orientation program which is design to make them see the importance of social insurance as help in changing the mindset of some informal workers. Our partnership with the federation of informal workers of Nigeria and local unions have also enabled us spread our outreach program. This includes connecting  poor working  condition to poverty, by donating safety equipment and engaging  informal workers. We realize  that a system that encourage both informal workers and their clients to contribute 1 percent of service delivery fee on a daily or weekly bases into the employment injury scheme  will help pay medical bill of victims of work accident who are mostly breadwinners of their  family. this will also enable them have  access to rehabilitation and return to work, hence keeping millions out of poverty.

The  nature of the informal sector has contributed to the Lack of universality of social protection coverage in developing countries, most especially the inability to collect contribution for social insurance schemes as well as lack of trust in government and lack of political will from government. WSAP a product of Advocacy for Social Protection and Citizen Orientation aligns with the  WURI West Africa price to extend social protection programs to informal sector leveraging on the use of  innovation  and technology to solve issue of contribution to social insurance regardless of literacy while also leveraging on unique identification system.   

Dual Contribution Mechanism (DCM) which allows the participation of both informal workers and their clients is a model that has not been tried before. This unique model is being used in order to fit into behavioral pattern of informal workers, most especially in west Africa, and makes it flexible to collect contribution. Secondly, our block chain technology creates a secure and transparent transaction platform which would help mitigate the risk of corruption and other malicious activity in the flow of transaction. Additionally, due to uncertainty of reaching informal workers, we developed an intelligent location software in order to identify individuals and make the claim to compensation and rehabilitation verifiable. Imagery usable app with less text and more familiar images will allow semi-illiterate users navigate the platform easily. Finally, our innovative reorientation program which comes with user manual, Tv series, behavioral modification programs, the use of testimonies and referrals will encourage informal workers  to subscribe into our platform.

The block-chain technology is a public electronic ledger built along a pair to pair (P2P) system that can be openly shared among users. The technology stores data online on thousands of servers which can be accessible everywhere in real time' thereby making any manipulation difficult or even impossible. One of the importance of the technology is that it cannot be easily manipulated making it a verifiable through audit-able record of transactions. An example of existing company using the block-chain technology is Bitcoin, which allows for transactions without exposing the data of the individuals.

Our reorientation programs and digital block chain platform would transform and modify informal worker behavior into realization and acceptance of social insurance. This would help mitigate fatalities and incapacitation at work due to  inaccessibility to health and would help reduce the out of pocket money that informal workers had to pay for medical bills. This will further help workers save money and easily access basic necessities of life such as shelter , food as well as education for themselves and their families. This will also help government easily expand social protection coverage. The long term effect will help "save millions of west Africans that fall into poverty daily" due to incapacitation as a result of hazardous working conditions. It will also improve transparency', trust and reduce corruption in government social insurance programs.

Employment injury scheme is specifically being used as a model due to existing legal framework that would be leveraged on in west Africa's largest nation, Nigeria. We have identified an existing legal framework which makes it easy to integrate informal workers into employment injury scheme without any legal hindrances in Nigeria. We believed this can be easily scaled through partnership with Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS). Our partnership with federation of informal workers and local cooperatives have validated our feasibility studies. The local cooperatives of informal workers are specifically vital to the success of the program since they would be trained to serve the non-technology users. Since it is intended to start as a voluntary contribution, we believed that testimonies and persistent reorientation programs will make it easier for informal workers to buy into the scheme over time.

The solution would be leveraging on less text and familiar images to informal workers based on their occupation. The design would be based on a game like, making it interesting and fun to use for semi-illiterates.  It will also be accessible in different local languages. In addition to that, local agents would be used for contribution collection from informal workers that do not have access to internet or phone with internet. The local cooperatives agents will also be educated to help the informal workers in terms of understanding the images.

Trained local cooperative agents which are part of informal workers in different locations, would be tasked with the responsibility of remitting contributions on behalf of those with low literacy connectivity level . Those trained agents would be supplied with internet and have access to regular training that will help in explaining and remitting and can also regularly inform informal workers of their contributions status and benefits.

In the next 1 year, we hope to serve about 950 thousand people. And by the next 5 years, we hope to have reached 5 million people or more. 

In the next year we hope to educate our first sets of local cooperative agents for informal workers and finish our technological tests. We also hope to have integrated at least 300 thousand informal workers into the employee compensation scheme managed by the Nigeria social insurance trust fund. And in the next 5 years, we anticipate to scale it to other west African countries like Ghana, Togo, Ivory Coast and Benin.

Lack of political will on the side of the government could be cited as one of the biggest challenge. The second barrier is the financial aspects which includes administrative costs, technology maintenance, local agents training and expenses. Other barriers could be the ability to verify genuineness of incidence (claim) and ability of the  government to remit genuine claim. These factors are very important for the sustainability of the scheme.

An advocacy campaign would be carried out in all west African countries through collaboration with other NGOs and civil societies. To advocate integration of informal worker into existing social insurance scheme through readiliy available technology such as ours. Legal options could also be considered to mount pressure on local representatives in parliament. To sustain the technology and maintain administrative costs, we intend to charge 5% on the contribution collected. This would be used to carter for the administrative costs. Incidence would be verified using local informal agents within vicinity of incidence.Free legal services would be offered to informal workers where genuine incidence becomes difficult to claim from the government.

5 full time workers, 4 part time   and 4 contractors

WSAP team are social protection, labour and legal experts. the Team lead and Founder of Advocacy for Social protection and citizen Orientation,  Emmanuel Adebayo Holds a Masters degree in  Analysis and design of social protection system from the Bonn Rhein Sieg University of applied Sciences in Germany, he was an ambassador for UNDP's Socialprotection.org and a TRANFORM fellow (African trained Expert for social protection) he has over 5 years of experience in international development, policy and humanitarian programs. four of our team members are legal practitioners of which one of them also holds a masters in social protection. we understand how to leverage on existing legal framework in extending social protection system to the informal sector. our organisation objective is focused on expanding social  protection programs especially social insurance to the informal sector in Africa.

Some of our team members also have experience working with government and informal organisations.  our team are experts who have worked and study both in developed countries and West Africa and understand how to domesticate  best practices using local initiatives. we also have informal workers in our team and understand the challenges with informal sector especially in the area of contribution collection.  

Currently we are partners with Federation of Informal workers of Nigeria (FIWON) and Welders, Carpenters and mechanics cooperatives in Lagos Nigeria. we also work with the Federal Ministry of Labor and Employment, National Insurance Social Trust Fund, National Youth Service Corps(NYSC) and Milary Limited. 

We have partnered  with FIWON to carryout an re-orientation programs with informer workers, we work with the ministry of labour in the Area of training, conference and awareness creation. Milary limited has supported  our organisation by providing us with over 200 personal Protective equipment which was donated to informal workers. and the NYSC has supported with volunteers for some of our programs

We are a non-profit organisation. Our Vision is to mitigate poverty to the barest minimum through the creation of innovative social protection system which will help solve the issue of universal coverage in social protection design, especially by creating platforms and systems that will help integrate the large informal sector into social protection system in Africa. We envision an inclusive social protection system which protects the vulnerable people such as the old people, children, youth, people living with disability and women in Africa. We envisage positive social change leading to good governance, political participation and sustainable development through our orientation programs. Our programs are being executed through support from donors and other organisations.

We intend to fund our project through grant and donation we however hope to sustain the project through certain percentage of contribution going to the government to maintain the technology and administrative cost. 

In order to currently develop our technology and scale up our orientation program,  we will need around 180,000.00 USD to further our activities by 30 January, 2021. However, the amount may be above 500,000.00 USD in order to scale to other west African countries. We intend to raise this money through donation. Since we are a non-profit organization, we are unable to go for loan or equity. 

We have estimated budget of 50,000.00 USD for the remaining months of 2020.

Winning these challenge will help limit the financial burden attached to WSAP program. We believe that winning the challenge will expedite the development of our mobile application and help scale our orientation program whilst bringing our vision into actualization.

To have a sustainable revenue and funding model. A partnership with more experienced organization in the area of non-profit business. We will go a long way in helping us attain financial independence while executing our programs.

The Technological partnership will enable us leverage on certain expertise in the implementation of our platform.

We intend to partner with the Nigerian Insurance Social Trust Fund for easy integration of informal workers intro the employee compensation scheme. We also intend to partner with ECOWAS in order to be able to replicate the policy, program and legal frame-work to other west African countries. The labour unions and other civil societies would also be partnered with for advocacy.