Publication: Digital Cash Transfers for Emergency Response: Lessons from Cameroon
Loading...
Published
2024-01-09
ISSN
Date
2024-01-09
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the government of Cameroon launched anemergency cash transfers program in urban areas. It aimed to mitigate the adverse economic impacts by providing temporary income support to poor informal sector workers unable to access other social protection benefits. Eighty thousand beneficiaries, mostly women, were selected to receive three transfers amounting to USD 275 (FCFA 180,000). A process evaluation was conducted in 2021 to document lessons learned from this first experience with digital government-to-people (G2P) payments in Cameroon. The evaluation combined extensive consultations with project implementors as well as focus group discussions and phone surveys with beneficiaries. The research revealed a strong demand for mobile money payments among the urban cash transfers beneficiaries. A substantial majority (78 percent) expressed a preference for payments directly into their mobile money accounts rather than in cash or through other methods. This preference can be linked to the already high penetration rates: 95 percent of beneficiaries had mobile money accounts before the project. However, it's important to acknowledge that this preference might not entirely represent the broader population, particularly in rural areas. Challenges persist in these regions concerning network coverage, civil registration, and financial literacy.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Botea, Ioana; Ndiaye, Omar. 2024. Digital Cash Transfers for Emergency Response: Lessons from Cameroon. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/40860 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Digitizing Cash Transfers to Remote Rural Populations(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-10)There is currently a major focus on digitization within African countries, with the interest of, on the one hand, increasing efficiency and lowering the cost-of-service delivery, and on the other hand, increasing financial inclusion for excluded parts of the population. Zambia provides an important case study of digitization of social protection transfers. Whilst Zambia is sparsely populated with remote rural populations often living up to 100 km from the nearest town, making beneficiaries hard to reach with digital services, the country has successfully demonstrated that cash transfers can be digitized for remote rural populations to varying extents, tailored to their particular context. This Discussion Note presents challenges faced and solutions found in digitizing cash transfer payments in Zambia, which may be of interest to other countries embarking on similar endeavors.Publication Cash Transfer Payment Mechanisms(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-06-14)As a part of “Evidence at Your Fingertips Series”, this note aims to summarize the impacts of cash transfers based on payment mechanisms which have diversified greatly in recent years. The review is largely based on the impact evaluation published in the past decade, finding that the payment mechanism—whether physical (in-person) or digital— does not have notably different impacts on how recipients use cash or on key outcome indicators related to consumption, gender, and financial inclusion. That said, digital transfers may be more cost-effective for both implementers and beneficiary households than physical cash payments, expand customer coverage for participating mobile network operators, and provide avenues to increase financial inclusion for the poor. While digital payments can offer opportunities, it is essential to invest in appropriate infrastructure and mechanisms to reach digitally excluded populations.Publication Cash Transfers in Pandemic Times(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2022-07)Is Coronavirus (Covid-19) a “game changer” for cash transfers? This tantalizing question has animated a large body of recent literature and over 60 virtual panels. This paper offers some clues to address the question by bringing together data, evaluations and practical experiences generated over the course of the pandemic. In particular, the paper flashes out differences between Covid-19 and other crises; it lays out an anatomy of global responses and offers novel data analysis around stylized international trends; synthesizes fresh empirical evidence on response effectiveness based on over 40 evaluations; discusses country-level operational practices as emerging from an array of high and lower-income contexts; and distills key insights with possible future implications.Publication Implementing Emergency Cash Transfers(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-05)Around the globe, there is an unending cycle of producing innovative policies that are relevantand responsive to today's complex problems of disaster risk reduction and mitigation. A lot ofevidence is pointing to the shifting paradigm in responding to emergencies. Foremost amongthem is the growing acceptance of cash transfers as a response tool to disasters.The Philippines is not oblivious to this developing paradigm. The Philippines is considered tohave one of the most advanced social protection (SP) systems in the East Asia Pacific region.These SP systems are designed to help poor households manage risk and shocks. Currently,there are different types of cash transfers being used by the Department of Social Welfare andDevelopment (DSWD) programs. These include: (1) the Pantawid Pamilya conditional cashtransfer (CCT) program; (2) the Sustainable Livelihood Program (SLP) using cash-for-work; and,(3) the National Community Driven Development program (NCDD). These programs use variousmodalities and mechanism for cash transfers in different stages of the post-disaster timeline.However, the SP element of DSWD's disaster risk management and response interventions canbe significantly improved especially if to be used as a response tool during disasters.Publication Safety First(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2021-05-19)Gender-based violence (GBV) has substantial individual and collective costs that disproportionately affect poorer women and girls and can constrain the impact of social programs. Globally, GBV is a drain on human capital development, poverty reduction, and growth. GBV also undermines the core objectives of social safety nets (SSNs) by eroding human capital, productivity, and well-being, as well as by increasing women and children’s vulnerability. The objective of this note is to provide operational guidance on how to optimize SSN program design and implementation to prevent GBV and empower women.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Western Balkans 6 Country Climate and Development Report(Washington, DC: World Bank Group, 2024-07-16)This Regional Western Balkans Countries Climate and Development Report (CCDR) stands out in several ways. In a region that often lacks cohesive regional alliances, this report emphasizes how the challenges faced across countries are often common and interconnected, and, importantly, that climate action requires coordination on multiple fronts. Simultaneously, it illustrates the differences across countries, places, and people that require targeted strategies and interventions. This report demonstrates how shocks and stressors re intensifying and how investments in adaptation could bring significant benefits in the form of avoided losses, accelerated economic potential, and amplified social and economic spillovers. Given the region’s high emission and energy intensity and the limitations of its current fossil fuel-based development model, the report articulates a path to greener and more resilient growth, a path that is more consistent with the aspiration of accession to the EU. The report finds that the net zero transition can be undertaken without compromising the economic potential of the Western Balkans and that it could lead to higher growth than under the Reference Scenario (RS) with appropriate structural reforms.Publication World Development Report 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-08-01)Middle-income countries are in a race against time. Many of them have done well since the 1990s to escape low-income levels and eradicate extreme poverty, leading to the perception that the last three decades have been great for development. But the ambition of the more than 100 economies with incomes per capita between US$1,100 and US$14,000 is to reach high-income status within the next generation. When assessed against this goal, their record is discouraging. Since the 1970s, income per capita in the median middle-income country has stagnated at less than a tenth of the US level. With aging populations, growing protectionism, and escalating pressures to speed up the energy transition, today’s middle-income economies face ever more daunting odds. To become advanced economies despite the growing headwinds, they will have to make miracles. Drawing on the development experience and advances in economic analysis since the 1950s, World Development Report 2024 identifies pathways for developing economies to avoid the “middle-income trap.” It points to the need for not one but two transitions for those at the middle-income level: the first from investment to infusion and the second from infusion to innovation. Governments in lower-middle-income countries must drop the habit of repeating the same investment-driven strategies and work instead to infuse modern technologies and successful business processes from around the world into their economies. This requires reshaping large swaths of those economies into globally competitive suppliers of goods and services. Upper-middle-income countries that have mastered infusion can accelerate the shift to innovation—not just borrowing ideas from the global frontiers of technology but also beginning to push the frontiers outward. This requires restructuring enterprise, work, and energy use once again, with an even greater emphasis on economic freedom, social mobility, and political contestability. Neither transition is automatic. The handful of economies that made speedy transitions from middle- to high-income status have encouraged enterprise by disciplining powerful incumbents, developed talent by rewarding merit, and capitalized on crises to alter policies and institutions that no longer suit the purposes they were once designed to serve. Today’s middle-income countries will have to do the same.Publication World Development Report 2004(World Bank, 2003)Too often, services fail poor people in access, in quality, and in affordability. But the fact that there are striking examples where basic services such as water, sanitation, health, education, and electricity do work for poor people means that governments and citizens can do a better job of providing them. Learning from success and understanding the sources of failure, this year’s World Development Report, argues that services can be improved by putting poor people at the center of service provision. How? By enabling the poor to monitor and discipline service providers, by amplifying their voice in policymaking, and by strengthening the incentives for providers to serve the poor. Freedom from illness and freedom from illiteracy are two of the most important ways poor people can escape from poverty. To achieve these goals, economic growth and financial resources are of course necessary, but they are not enough. The World Development Report provides a practical framework for making the services that contribute to human development work for poor people. With this framework, citizens, governments, and donors can take action and accelerate progress toward the common objective of poverty reduction, as specified in the Millennium Development Goals.Publication World Development Report 2023: Migrants, Refugees, and Societies(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2023-04-25)Migration is a development challenge. About 184 million people—2.3 percent of the world’s population—live outside of their country of nationality. Almost half of them are in low- and middle-income countries. But what lies ahead? As the world struggles to cope with global economic imbalances, diverging demographic trends, and climate change, migration will become a necessity in the decades to come for countries at all levels of income. If managed well, migration can be a force for prosperity and can help achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. World Development Report 2023 proposes an innovative approach to maximize the development impacts of cross-border movements on both destination and origin countries and on migrants and refugees themselves. The framework it offers, drawn from labor economics and international law, rests on a “Match and Motive Matrix” that focuses on two factors: how closely migrants’ skills and attributes match the needs of destination countries and what motives underlie their movements. This approach enables policy makers to distinguish between different types of movements and to design migration policies for each. International cooperation will be critical to the effective management of migration.Publication World Development Report 2018(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2018)Every year, the World Bank's World Development Report takes on a topic of central importance to global development. The 2018 Report, Learning to Realize Education's Promise, is the first ever devoted entirely to education. Now is an excellent time for it: education has long been critical for human welfare, but is even more so in a time of rapid economic change. The Report explores four main themes. First, education's promise: Education is a powerful instrument for eradicating poverty and promoting shared prosperity, but fulfilling its potential requires better policies - both within and outside the education system. Second, the learning crisis: Despite gains in education access, recent learning assessments show that many young people around the world, especially from poor families, are leaving school unequipped with even the most foundational skills they need for life. At the same time, internationally comparable learning assessments show that skills in many middle-income countries lag far behind what those countries aspire to. Third, promising interventions to improve learning: Research from areas such as brain science, pedagogical innovations, or school management have identified interventions that promote learning by ensuring that learners are prepared, that teachers are skilled as well as motivated, and that other inputs support the teacher-learner relationship. Fourth, learning at scale: Achieving learning throughout an education system will require more than just scaling up effective interventions. Change requires overcoming technical and political barriers by deploying salient metrics for mobilizing actors and tracking progress, building coalitions for learning, and being adaptive when implementing programs.