In March 2020, the coronavirus pandemic broke out in Israel.

What began as a health crisis soon turned into an economic crisis, which led many workers to go on forced unpaid leave and went to the National Insurance Institute (NII) for assistance. There was a need to find creative solutions within the limits of the law and the data available to the NII, and to find workable and quick solutions that would allow the payment of unemployment benefits to unpaid workers.

EjoHeza is a voluntary digital pension fund managed as a defined contribution system, officially launched by Government of Rwanda on 14 December 2018, with the objective to increase coverage. All Rwandan residents including foreigners with a national identity number have the right to register, save to the scheme and benefit at the age of 55 years.

In 2010, social security policy was reviewed to include the requirement to extend coverage to over 70 per cent of the working population by 2015. The Rwanda Social Security Board (RSSB) reviewed and examined strategies on how to extend coverage to the informal sector. These strategies included establishing joint working partnerships with key institutions dealing with the informal sector, designing benefit packages that are attractive to the informal sector, simplifying administrative procedures to reduce compliance costs and strengthening decentralization of services among others.

The major challenges that the Fund encounters are employers' non compliance and low coverage rate. In addressing the issue, the decentralization strategy was set to improve service delivery, reduce bureaucratic handling of claims, increase coverage rate and bring services closer to the people to ensure easy facilitation in the collection of contributions and benefits payments.