Understanding Roscas’ Resilience in Providing Informal Social Protection Amidst Covid–19 Pandemic in Ongata Rongai Ward Kajiado Kenya.

Abstract

In Africa, social protection has been lauded and now stands out to be a very strategic tool and modality in responding to poverty and the many eventualities that cause it, like shocks and exposure to different risks and vulnerabilities. State-offered social protection in Africa does not cover the majority of citizens, particularly those in the informal sector, forcing many vulnerable groups into informal social protection mechanisms. However, informal social protection institutions respond differently when subjected to intense shocks or crises like the COVID-19. Existing literature paints two pictures: one side in support that informal social protection mechanism has capacities and abilities to withstand the impacts of intense shocks while the other states that capacities and abilities of informal social protection institutions are threatened when subjected to intense shock impacts. This study seeks to gain a better understanding of ROSCAs’ resilience in providing informal social protection amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, as a contribution towards clarifying the existing contention in topical literature. Moreover, COVID – 19 pandemic in the current study is a proxy, a projection of ROSCAs operations in future similar uncertainties. The study used a qualitative design with focus group discussions and key informant interviews as primary data collection tools. Focus group discussions were conducted on ROSCA members who were active in groups, while key informant interviews were conducted on ROSCA leaders and social services officials. Interview guides for focus group discussions and the key informants were pre-tested by sharing them with social services officials and some ROSCA members in urge of understanding the questions that needed clarification from the researcher before the research. Using purposive sampling, the study sampled 57 respondents, with 4 focus group discussions and 9 key informants. Data gathered from the field was cleaned before the analysis, through following up on incomplete cases done via phone calls. The data was then analyzed using thematic analysis conducted manually and the findings presented in terms of emerging themes. The study found a range of vulnerabilities that affected ROSCA members during COVID – 19, challenges that ROSCA groups encountered in urge to cushion their members amid the pandemic, and strategies that ROSCAs were coming up with intended to improve their cushioning capabilities and abilities in future uncertainties. The results led to the conclusion by this study that ROSCAs were not resilient in cushioning their members during the Corona period although they have plans on how to improve their abilities to cushion in future uncertainties, thus be resilient in their operation when subjected to such intense shocks. The study recommends that ROSCAs need long-term developments unlike short term cushioning plans which are not sufficient during covariate shock, proper financial management skills during crises to enable them cater for emergencies, membership diversification to distribute shock effectives equally among members and involvement of social services officials in ROSCA meetings to help them understand critical dimensions. Further research should be done in this area to assess what strategies have worked for ROSCA as a result of adopting them in relation to COVID – 19 pandemic.