MobileActive.org

Conditional and unconditional cash transfers have been effective in improving development outcomes in a variety of contexts, yet the costs of these programs to program recipients and implementing agencies are rarely discussed. The introduction of mobile money transfer systems in many developing countries offers new opportunities for a more cost-effective means of implementing cash transfer programs.

This paper reports on the first randomized evaluation of a cash transfer program delivered via the mobile phone. In response to a devastating drought in Niger, households in targeted villages received monthly cash transfers as part of a social protection program. One-third of targeted villages received a monthly cash transfer via a mobile money transfer system (called zap), whereas one-third received manual cash transfers and the remaining one-third received manual cash transfers plus a mobile phone. We show that the zap delivery mechanism strongly reduced the variable distribution costs for the implementing agency, as well as program recipients’ costs of obtaining the cash transfer. The zap approach also resulted in additional benefits: households in zap villages used their cash transfer to purchase a more diverse set of goods, had higher diet diversity, depleted fewer assets and grew more types of crops, especially marginal cash crops grown by women.

We posit that the potential mechanisms underlying these results are the lower costs and greater privacy of the receiving the cash transfer via the zap mechanism, as well as changes in intra-household decision-making. This suggests that m-transfers could be a cost-effective means of providing cash transfers for remote rural populations, especially those with limited road and financial infrastructure. However, research on the broader welfare effects in the short- and long-term is still needed.

This report tackles ICT4D under three key headings: information, communication and participation. While not ignoring negatives, the report primarily explores, through the lens of Cambridge activities in ICT4D, the positive impacts and ongoing challenges of ICT4D: its ability to provide access to valuable information, to create meaningful two-way dialogues, to reach remote and excluded communities, and to empower the excluded to participate in their own development and societies.

There are still significant barriers preventing people in the Global South from accessing ICTs. But with the ongoing, rapid growth in mobile phone use and network connectivity across the world, the parameters are changing. We need to keep adapting to this environment in order to succeed. We must also ensure that the poorest and most disadvantaged are not left behind.

We have also seen challenges and progress that still need to be made in harnessing ICTs to achieve positive and lasting development outcomes. Technology can only ever be one ingredient in this process, but it can be a potent one. A key strength of ICT4D lies in the potential for participation, especially as technologies become more and more interactive.

The Information Economy Report 2011 demonstrates that effective use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in both the private and the public sector can significantly contribute to and accelerate progress in private sector development (PSD).

Governments and their development partners should take a holistic and comprehensive approach to leveraging ICTs in PSD, although a review of PSD strategies indicates that this is often not the practice. Similarly, donor strategies often refer to the use of ICTs in PSD in a peripheral manner only, if at all. On its own, new technology will have limited effects on PSD. However, when carefully integrated into policies and processes, ICTs can reduce business costs, promote transparent, rules-based systems, and improve communication between the public and private sector.

Governments need to work with the private sector to create an investment climate and a business environment that encourage the use of ICTs within private firms as well as in government. The potential of ICTs can then be realized, through adequate infrastructure and skills, and a commitment by governments to making markets work effectively. In some areas, there is already considerable experience and evidence to guide policy initiatives. In other areas, where opportunities for ICTs to contribute to PSD have emerged only in the past few years (as in the case of mobile money services), more analysis and testing of different business models is needed to assess potential and identify best practices.

This report uses AudienceScapes data from a nationally representative survey of Zambia to focus on how people of various social groups access and use mobile communications. The report also showcases how the AudienceScapes survey data can help members of the development community to design and implement more effective programs in technological access, communications and information empowerment.

Beyond measuring basic access and use levels, this report works to answer several key research questions regarding the role of mobile phones in economic and social development in Zambia. These include but are not limited to; what is the potential for SMS-based information services as a development tool, is the mobile market beginning to reach disadvantaged parts of the population, what are the continued barriers to mobile phone access and use, who is using mobile money and is their greater market potential for these services?