Technology-Driven Development
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Bibliographic details
- Authors: ADAM BEHSUDI
- Published: March 2, 2022
Overview
- Togo used an innovative digital payment initiative, Novissi, to provide financial assistance during the pandemic.
- Interview subject: Cina Lawson, Togo’s minister of digital economy and transformation; interviewer: Adam Behsudi.
- Key framing: digitalization is central to Togo’s growth and development and to delivering fiscal policy and social protection.
Novissi payment program: design and outcomes
- Total disbursed: $34 million to more than 920,000 vulnerable people—about one-fourth of the adult population.
- Launch and rollout speed:
- Launched April 8, 2020, eight days after the health emergency was declared by the president.
- Platform fully developed in-house and operational in 10 days.
- Within one week after launch, disbursed social assistance to about 450,000 people.
- Delivery mechanics:
- 100 percent digital cash transfer program with no face-to-face contact from registration to eligibility assessment and cash payment.
- Payout speed: cash transfers reached mobile money accounts in less than two minutes once declared eligible.
- Platform functions without internet using USSD (unstructured supplementary service data); users register by dialling the USSD shortcode *855#.
- Targeting and technical features:
- Leverages artificial intelligence (AI), satellite imagery, cell phone metadata, and machine learning to improve beneficiary targeting.
- AI targeting led by the government of Togo with technical support from Innovations for Poverty Action and Center for Effective Global Action researchers.
- A $10 million grant from GiveDirectly supported 140,000 people.
- Gender sensitivity:
- Women receive about 15 percent more cash than men.
Rationale and socioeconomic context
- Poverty and labor context:
- More than 50 percent of the population still lives in extreme poverty.
- About 80 percent works in the informal sector on day-to-day jobs that cannot be done from home.
- Policy imperative: prevent a rise in the national poverty rate by supporting informal workers and vulnerable households.
Digital infrastructure, access, and leapfrogging
- Argument: leapfrogging is necessary to provide African solutions to African problems.
- Institutional development: creation of Agence Togo Digital to recruit skills, ensure interoperable government systems, and enhance data value.
- Internet and mobile penetration:
- Mobile internet penetration rate reached 63 percent in 2020, compared to barely 13 percent five or six years ago.
- Affordability and coverage:
- Connectivity prices have fallen while high-speed fixed and mobile internet have been extended across the country, enabling broader participation in the digital economy.
Togo Digital 2025: strategic goals and projects
- Strategic ambition: become a logistics and services hub for the western region of Africa and transform the economy with digital technologies at the core.
- Project integration:
- Three-fourths of Togolese development road map projects for 2025 have a digital component and are part of the national strategy Togo Digital 2025.
- Specific aims:
- Provide all citizens and residents above age five with a biometric ID and easy and cost-effective access to high-speed internet and mobile devices.
- Digitalize public and social services, and all government-to-citizen and citizen-to-government payments.
- Accelerate the transformation of the economy and make Togo a digital hub with an ecosystem of innovation and start-ups.
Digitalization and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
- Claim: The Sustainable Development Goals cannot be achieved without digitalization.
- Global poverty context:
- According to the World Bank, about 690 million people live on less than $1.90 a day.
- More than 50 percent of the world’s most vulnerable people live in sub-Saharan Africa.
- Strategic view: mobile technologies, big data, machine learning, and digital public infrastructures enable timely, effective digital aid; policymakers must adopt robust approaches to address global issues exacerbated by COVID-19, climate change, conflicts, and natural disasters.
F&D Magazine, "Technology-Driven Development," Adam Behsudi, March 2022.
Content in this bundle
- في خندق العمل
- La technologie, moteur du développement
- trenches
- Desarrollo a base de tecnología ● Finanzas y Desarrollo ● Marzo de 2022
- Technology-Driven Development
- 科技驱动发展