Jordan Takaful — Algorithmic Cash Transfer Targeting for Vulnerable Households

Jordan's National Aid Fund (NAF), under the Ministry of Social Development, operates Takaful — a World Bank-co-designed cash transfer programme that uses an algorithmic eligibility system to identify and rank vulnerable households. Launched in 2019, the programme had reached over 250,000 households by 2023, targeting the approximately 24% of Jordan's population living below the poverty line.

The algorithm evaluates households across 57 undisclosed factors, assessed at a single point in time to assign eligibility scores that determine cash transfer amounts. The World Bank provided technical co-design support, framing algorithmic targeting as a means of improving precision and reducing discretion compared to administrative caseworker decisions.

Two independent assessments document significant governance failures. Human Rights Watch (July 2023) found the system excessively inflexible — unable to respond to dynamic poverty conditions — and systematically excluding Syrian refugees, Palestinians without Jordanian passports, migrant workers, and non-Jordanian family members of Jordanian women. The Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (February 2024) further documented how the algorithm's full opacity — no factor weights or eligibility thresholds are publicly available — leaves affected households without meaningful grounds to challenge adverse decisions, creating what the report termed a 'transformer state' that obscures power under algorithmic neutrality.

Takaful illustrates a recurring dilemma in AI-assisted welfare delivery: national-scale coverage breadth is achievable, but rigid point-in-time targeting combined with opaque criteria can entrench exclusions of particularly vulnerable populations. It underscores the importance of transparent factors, dynamic data updates, and accessible appeals mechanisms as design requirements — not afterthoughts — in welfare AI.

Read the full analysis: https://chrgj.org/2024-02-19-transformer-states-jordan/