CDR-Triggered Mobile Money — Cutting Emergency Cash Delivery from 100 Days to Under 10 in Eastern DRC

In the conflict-driven displacement crisis in North and South Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo — 7.8 million people internally displaced nationwide as of January 2025, including roughly 500,000 in Goma that same month — traditional humanitarian cash assistance typically took 100 to 130 days to reach affected families. Flowminder Foundation, working with GiveDirectly and a mobile network operator, built a live pipeline that analyses pseudonymised Call Detail Records (CDRs) for anomalies in subscribers' 'stay locations,' flagging sudden population movements consistent with new displacement; flagged cases are then cross-checked against other sources and validated on the ground before GiveDirectly remotely enrols consenting subscribers for mobile-money cash transfers.
Over five months, the pipeline was triggered for 8 separate armed-attack events, reaching more than 5,600 displaced subscribers and supporting over 5,300 families. After the first attack it responded to, 490 people received $125 each within seven days of displacement; the fastest response delivered assistance within six days. GiveDirectly and Flowminder both report the pipeline cut typical response times roughly tenfold, from ~100-130 days to under 10, and describe it as still operational for ongoing displacement in north-eastern DRC.
This is a genuinely novel use of mobile-network data for humanitarian targeting, but the evidence is self-reported by the two implementing/technical partners rather than independently audited, and the method still depends on field verification before enrolment. It also sits inside an organisation with a documented governance failure: GiveDirectly publicly acknowledged fraud and diversion in an earlier, separate DRC cash-transfer programme in 2023-2024 and published its response. That history does not invalidate this newer, CDR-triggered pipeline, but it is a material reason to treat the reported figures with some caution pending independent verification.

Read the full analysis: https://www.flowminder.org/resources/publications-reports/targeting-mobile-money-cash-transfers-for-emergency-relief-using-call-detail-records-in-the-democratic-republic-of-the-congo-drc