Publication: Delivering Digital G2P Payments to Urban Informal Populations: Lessons and Future Policy Implications from COVID-19 Responses
Date
2023-10-03
ISSN
Published
2023-10-03
Author(s)
Abstract
The COVID-19 response in many
Sub-Saharan African countries included the rapid deployment
of social protection programs leveraging digital systems to
counteract the income losses that were disproportionately
experienced by urban informal populations. Using data from
three in-depth country case studies, this paper finds that
these digital government-to-person (G2P) payments
contributed to countries reaching beneficiaries quickly and
safely and that G2P payments may be particularly viable in
urban, as compared to rural, areas due to greater access to
digital and financial infrastructure, creative use of big
data, and population density that allows for mass
communication. However, there are still pockets of exclusion
in urban areas emerging from incomplete digital access,
limited financial inclusion, underdeveloped financial
ecosystems, and high population mobility. It is particularly
challenging to identify, communicate with, assess, and
deliver G2P services to informal workers in urban areas due
to their non-registration status, variable income flows, the
blending of the home and household enterprises into a single
entity, and the governments’ limited experience in
identifying eligible beneficiaries within this segment.
While adopting a digital G2P architecture provides a
promising avenue to strengthen the safety nets for this
segment in the region, exclusion challenges remain. Given
the ubiquity of urban informality in the region, countries
will need to work to include the urban informal in
foundational digital systems, such as national IDs and
social registries, adopt flexible regulatory and hybrid
delivery models to address the sector’s varied needs, and
seek to foster robust digital payment ecosystems to maximize
the potential for spillover benefits.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Ubah, Ubah Thomas; Mukherjee, Anit; Webster, Brian; Cunningham, Wendy; Marin, Georgina. 2023. Delivering Digital G2P Payments to Urban Informal Populations: Lessons and Future Policy Implications from COVID-19 Responses. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/40422 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.”