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BRIEFS
May 03, 2022
Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis continues to worsen, with the World Food Programme (WFP) reporting that 22.8 million people—more than half the country’s population—are projected to be acutely food insecure in 2022, including 8.7 million at risk of famine-like conditions. Even before the Taliban t...
CGD NOTES
December 21, 2020
Global e-commerce sales surged to US$25.6 trillion in 2018, up 8 percent from 2017. Leading the way are China (US$1.5 trillion), the United States (US$600 billion), and the United Kingdom (US$135 billion) holding the top three spots respectively. Yet Africa, with 17 percent of the world’s population...
POLICY PAPERS
August 06, 2019
Following the launch of M-Pesa in 2007, Kenya has emerged as a global leader in the development of mobile money and in increasing rates of financial inclusion. This paper shows how M-Pesa’s success has led to a series of endogenous innovations that have shaped Kenya’s digital space, plac...
WORKING PAPERS
March 16, 2018
This paper presents short-term results from an experiment randomizing the promotion and registration of a mobile savings account among women microentrepreneurs in Tanzania, with and without business training. Six months post-intervention, the results show that women save substantially more through t...
POLICY PAPERS
February 20, 2018
We conducted phone-based surveys on energy access and demand in twelve African countries. From these findings, we draw several potential policy implications. First, both grid electricity and off-grid solutions currently are inadequate to meet many African consumers’ modern energy demands. Seco...
Multimedia
April 20, 2017
The Indian Ministry of Finance’s 2017 Economic Survey considers—though does not commit to—the idea of a large-scale experiment in UBI, or universal basic income. How would it work? What effects would it have? Arvind Subramanian—lead author of the Survey, chief econo...
Multimedia
February 15, 2017
Viral videos, crowdsourced donations, digital cash transfers for refugees—what opportunities do digital technologies present for development, and how can those of us working on policy innovation make better use of them? Mobile phones were a good start, Devex's Raj Kumar says, but we could ...
WORKING PAPERS
July 13, 2016
As mobile phone surveys are gaining popularity among researchers and practitioners in international development, one primary challenge is improving survey response and completion rates. A common solution is to provide monetary compensation to respondents. This paper reports on our experience with us...
POLICY PAPERS
June 16, 2015
The development of mobile payment platforms in developing countries is revolutionizing access to finance for the poor. Mobile payment platforms allow their users to pay and transfer funds in mobile money but also offer access to other financial products, such as savings or insurance.