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Good practice Imported

Zap — Mobile Money Cash Transfers for Drought-Affected Households

Niger · Tahoua · See the Niger profile

Evidence: Randomised controlled trial Top 38% 76/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

During Niger's 2010 food crisis, Concern Worldwide ran a randomized trial paying cash transfers via mobile money ('Zap') against manual cash and cash-plus-phone arms. Zap recipients traveled less to collect aid and had modestly higher diet diversity.

0.45 km
Distance to Zap cash-out point
1 km
Distance to manual cash point
13.65 USD
Cost per recipient, Zap
12.76 USD
Cost per recipient, manual cash

Details

Maturity
Discontinued
Promoter
Concern Worldwide
Period
2010
Keywords
humanitarian aid, mobile money, food security, cash transfers

Context

Following Niger's 2009/10 drought, Concern Worldwide randomly assigned 96 food-deficit villages in the Tahoua region to three cash-transfer arms of 32 villages each — manual cash, cash plus a placebo phone, and cash via the 'Zap' mobile-money service — reaching about 1,200 women across roughly 10,000 households with monthly transfers for five months.

Results

Zap recipients travelled substantially less to collect transfers (0.45km vs about 1km for manual cash), were 4-5 percentage points more likely to consume fruit and 6-12 points more likely to consume fats than cash/placebo households, though delivery via mobile money cost slightly more per person overall (US$13.65 vs US$12.76) once handset costs were included.

Conclusions

This time-limited five-month pilot became one of the founding pieces of evidence on the costs and benefits of digitising humanitarian cash-transfer delivery, though mobile money in Niger never scaled to East African levels.

Implementation

Implementation detail (cost, timeline, staffing, conditions for success) is not yet available for this practice.

Commonly funded by

Philanthropic / foundation funding

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Data sources

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