Art Appraisal Blog

This annual report summarizes the work produced by the World Bank’s Identification for Development and G2Px initiatives in 2021. It highlights individual country experiences such as in Togo and Lesotho, as well as their insights regarding gender.  

As countries have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic, digital vouchers have been used in some contexts to distribute aid. This MicroSave blog post, the first of two, briefly discusses the benefits of e-vouchers, and their use by humanitarian agencies.

As countries have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic, digital vouchers have been used in some contexts to distribute aid. This MicroSave blog post, the second of two, briefly discusses the introduction of e-vouchers in Kenya, and the challenges that have emerged.

The COVID-19 crisis revealed that income support systems in the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region were both fundamental and insufficient. This paper by the Inter-American Development Bank presents novel estimates of the coverage and beneficiary distribution of all non-contributory cash transfers both before and during the COVID-19 crisis. It also discusses the tools and methods used by individual countries in their response, placing digital G2P initiatives within a larger...

This paper discusses efforts to digitize Indonesia’s social protection systems in the context of Japan’s Society 5.0 initiative. It summarizes the trajectory of database development and use in Indonesia, as well as the country’s 2017 mandate that all government benefits be distributed in a cashless manner.

This World Bank blog post outlines Paraguay’s Pytyvõ program, which reached a considerable number of the country’s households in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Paraguay achieved this despite lacking a comprehensive social registry at the onset of the crisis, and relied heavily on electronic wallets to distribute benefits.

This paper, developed with inputs from across the CALP Network, explores how cash and voucher assistance has been scaled up or adjusted in response to Covid-19, and how it is changing ways of working. It includes discussions of the increased digitization of humanitarian CVA, with particular focus on KYC and communications.

The use of cash as a modality for delivering humanitarian and social protection assistance in Lao PDR is nascent. Up until recently, cash in hand has been the only feasible way to deliver transfers to targeted recipients. This scoping exercise highlights how mobile money could redress some of the drawbacks linked to cash in hand for both cash actors and beneficiaries. These include: access constraints, lack of traceability, and the...

This report summarizes a 2021 workshop hosted by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, the African Union, and the World Bank on the experience of African countries in using digitized social protection in response to COVID-19. It includes discussions of using existing social protection information to expand coverage and the development of interoperable data systems. The report concludes by emphasizing the need for systems to be designed...

This report summarizes a 2021 workshop hosted by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean on the experience of Latin American countries in using digitized social protection in response to COVID-19. It includes discussions of quickly updating existing records and developing interoperable data systems. The report concludes by emphasizing the need for having different channels for updating information...