A SORT of experiment is being conducted on the just-unveiled programme where small traders are slated for digital inclusion on the basis of the personal identification number, or the tax identification number.

Either number simply relates to the fact that one conducts a business in the streets for which cash is earned and is operating that unit instead of being someone else’s servant or staff member.

Earlier on, tax inclusion related to a threshold of business output outside local government levies of some types like for waste collection, higher for shops than houses, licences, etc.

On the face of it, there is a mushrooming idea or rolling out of a programme where more than 60,000 traders across the country are set to be registered in a formal digital system and included in an economic empowerment programme.

This is the brainchild of the National Economic Empowerment Council and was announced at midweek during a working meeting with regional secretariat officials as well as district executives.

The programme seeks to have marginalised groups of youth, women, the elderly and people with disabilities form production groups within their localities – and this for credit eligibility instead of catering for individual needs. It looks a good idea, if it works.

How correctly the credit programmes will be designed will depend on the bottom line as to what the government means to do.

If it seeks to bring together as many of them as possible, and sparing fund managers the trouble of listening to individual projects, the layout as provided is workable.

It means that there is a general responsibility spread on each of their group members and answerable to the group as it is accountable collectively.

All this is plausible but introduces an antidote of failing to take the best lessons from experience that women-based collective initiatives work.

It is one thing to wish to target empowering citizens in groups and to actually do so with incomparable levels of returns or efficacy, a parameter of difficulty.

Things could likely have gone better by targeting helping women to uplift their households as they have family interest at heart. However, the social dogma that the husband is the head of a household leads to such cash being deviated to entertainment when it falls in male heads’ hands. It is part of reality.

That the programme has already been introduced in 13 regions and will be pursued in more also shows that there is a rule of thumb modality that it will likely work, while the real intent is to show that the government cares.

How far the various groups will fare in the programme is anyone’s guess, as it possible that some provisions are included at least in the monitoring of certain groups, primarily to stem directing the funds into welfare instead of empowerment.

In retrospect, it is arguable if a lack of follow-up on project use will not amount to election influencing.