Abstract:  Since the beginning of the cash transfer era in Kenya, there have been efforts by some politicians, civil servants, and international actors to broaden, evenly allocate, and localise the provision of social protection. Simultaneously, there have been consistent efforts by international donors, particularly the World Bank, to narrow the provision of social protection to the poor and improve the efficiency of poverty-targeting through institutional reforms. The latest example of this is the development of a national social registry supported through a World Bank loan. A social registry is a large-scale data system that holds socio-economic data on households and is used to administer social policy provision. This article argues that, despite social registries being framed as a bureaucratic and neutral administrative practice, they are underpinned by residualist ideas about social policy provisioning. This means the development and institutionalisation of the national social registry touches on core contestations within the sector, regarding poverty-targeting, local registration processes, and the visibility of coverage expansion. This has exacerbated a longstanding tension between two competing visions of social protection in Kenya and their respective institutional supporters. Due to these implicit political tensions, the institutionalisation of the social registry has exacerbated contradictions and dysfunctions within social protection provisioning rather than resolved them.

Keywords:  institutional change; politics of social protection; social registry; World Bank

Published:   14 January 2026

Issue:   Vol 14 (2026): The Politics of Pro-Poor Policies in the Global South (In Progress)