The COVID-19 pandemic hit the world unexpectedly. The first case of COVID-19 in South Africa was reported in February 2020. In March of the same year, the President of the Republic declared a state of national disaster in South Africa. By the end of March 2020, South Africa went into hard lockdown. The COVID-19 pandemic threatened to have a devastating impact in South Africa, especially for vulnerable communities. A targeted response was crucial in determining where the most vulnerable populations were located in terms of COVID-19 transmission in the country. Research was initiated to identify populations at multiple risk and develop a geographic visualisation tool (1).

With the success of constructing the Child MPI in Thailand in 2018, the Office of the National Economic and Social Development Council (NESDC) took another step in 2019 by producing the National Multidimensional Poverty Index (National MPI) as an additional official measure of overall poverty in Thailand. It was also constructed with the purpose of monitoring the progress of SDGs, particularly SDG 1.2.

In 2015, the Sustainable Development Goals were established with the central theme of Leaving No One Behind. Since its inception in 2010, the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (global MPI), produced together with the Human Development Report Office of the United Nations Development Programme, has always monitored various dimensions in which the poor experience deprivations. It leaves no one behind by illuminating how people experience poverty.

Over a decade ago, Sabina Alkire and James Foster developed the Alkire-Foster (AF) method, a flexible technique for measuring multidimensional poverty, inequality, and wellbeing that goes beyond one-dimensional approaches to measure poverty such as income or consumption. Since then, the AF method has been widely used by governments, development agencies, NGOs, and even the private sector to build multidimensional measures grounded in people’s experiences and values, tailored to specific contexts. These multidimensional measures have been proven to be powerful tools to design and coordinate policies, allocate resources, and target beneficiaries.