Using Big Data and machine learning to locate the poor in Nigeria According to the 2018/19 Nigeria Living Standards Survey (NLSS), just 1.6% of Nigerians lived in a household that was enrolled in the National Social Safety Net Project (NASSP), the country’s flagship social protection program. As is the case in other countries, those Nigerians newly impoverished by the COVID-19 crisis are likely to be different from the existing poor: they are more urban, more likely to live in southern Nigeria, and more dependent on service sector incomes. This evolving profile of the poor is reflected in current efforts to expand social protection in Nigeria, including the Rapid Response Register for the COVID-19 Cash Transfer Project, which is being guided by the mapping exercise described below.