A Model of Controlling Utilization of Social Grants in South Africa

Abstract

South Africa is one of the most unequal countries in the World. Social grant in South Africa is supported by the Social development macro policy framework since 1994. It was aimed at poverty alleviation that combines social and economic goals. Government over the years has been faced with a number of challenges in social grants and benefits administration such as fragmented institutional arrangements and a lack of uniformity, fraud and corruption. Despite the fact that the government took steps in minimizing fraud and corruption associated with the social grants administration, the challenges of utilization of funds disbursed still exist. This research seeks to design and implement a system that controls utilization of social grants using Near Field Communication technology. In this paper, we present the system design and architecture of the system to be implemented. We present the findings of a preliminary study of the utilization of social grants by recipients. We collected data by interviewing social grant recipients in South Africa. The results of this preliminary study shows that 62% of social grant recipients use their funds within a week, 82% within two weeks, and 92% within three weeks. Only 8% use the funds until the fourth week.