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The Atlas of Innovation for Economic Stability 1 Atlas- (n) A book of maps or charts.
Innovation- (n) Anything different than standard practice that has the potential for radical social, environmental, or economic impact.
Economic Stability- (n) The ability to meet basic needs and to prosper, even in the face of economic, political, or social volatility.
ISBN 0-89492-927-5 2 The Atlas of Innovation for Economic Stability Acknowledgements FHI 360 would like to acknowledge the generous support of The Rockefeller Foundation for this research and crowdsourcing effort, and the constructive engagement and feedback provided by Alyson Wise, Associate Director, Jobs, and Ashvin Dayal, Associate Vice President & Managing Director, Smart Power. Phil Psilos served as FHI 360’s principal investigator. FHI 360 team members include lead researcher Claire Gillum, writer Shawn Kelley, art director and graphic designer Irinn Viniaphat, and social media lead Leanne Gray. An expert group including Caroline Averch, Bryanna Millis, Monika Aring, and Jacqueline Bass provided input and feedback on the research process. FHI 360’s Ivan Charner and Michael Tetelman provided invaluable reviews of a draft version of the Atlas. In addition, Tanya Accone, UNICEF, Derval Usher and Dwayne Caruthers, Pulse Lab Jakarta, and Tim Nourse, Making Cents International, made significant written contributions pertaining to their organizations and activities.
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Stabilizing Jobs and Gigs focuses on work-linked innovations that help both employees and non-standard workers cope with present and future instability. ese include several technology- enabled efforts by global brands to encourage worker welfare and labor standards compliance;
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on work-linked innovations that help both employees and non-standard workers cope with present and future instability. Some of these, including LaborLink and Workplace Options, Golden Dreams, and the Strategic Partnership for Supply Chain Transformation are forging new technology-enabled alliances between global brands, local employers, and employees to improve worker wellbeing and strengthen;
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The Atlas of Innovation for Economic Stability Table of Contents
Executive Forewords Introduction Summary
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Reg.
Small Enterprises, Stabilizing Jobs Consumption Unlimited and Gigs Floors and Nets
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Inclusive Big Data, Small Devices Collective Financialization (Better Livelihoods) Security
T PASSPOR
Personhood and India Conclusions & Rights Innovation Lab Recommendations
Annex Annex Annex More about Findings References Innovations
The Atlas of Innovation for Economic Stability Executive Summary
Building on previous work to define the landscape and key indicators of inclusive economies, in e Rockefeller Foundation provided support to FHI to engage in a global search to identify policy, program, and technology innovations that promote economic stability for individuals, communities, firms, and countries, with an emphasis on the welfare of poor and vulnerable people worldwide. is Atlas of Innovation for Economic Stability is the output of our global research and crowdsourcing effort.
I A wave of good economic news in has not fundamentally altered the basic story of a slow and imbalanced economic recovery from the financial crisis. e aftermath Context accelerated growth in wealth and income inequality, economic fragility of the middle class across the developed world, and saw little improvement in the livelihoods of most people who live in lower-income countries and work in the informal sector. In the US and Europe, stagnant or declining real wages and a shift towards non- standard work are now widely recognized as eroding longstanding social bargains, creating a large new class of formerly middle-class workers referred to as the “precariat.” Unstable work arrangements introduced over the past years and accelerated by the “gig” and “platform” economies, and predicted large-scale job loss or restructuring resulting from automation and other features of an oncoming “Fourth Industrial Revolution,” portend a future of greater volatility in how people work and earn. In high-income OECD countries, this means less certainty about opportunities in the formal job market. For developing countries, it interrupts development trajectories that assumed the growth of mass industrial employment would be a stepping stone to higher incomes. In this sense, there appears to be a convergence in process in which income earners around the world are likely to face more similar baseline levels of uncertainty and instability. is is the case despite significant progress in reducing poverty in the developing world, rapid growth in many emerging economies, emergence of dynamic technology sectors in India, China, Kenya, Indonesia, and Vietnam, and broad-based global commitment to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
II For individuals, households, and communities, economic stability is the ability to meet basic Framing needs and to prosper, even in the face of economic, political, or social volatility. Influences on Economic economic stability encompass macroeconomic management, regulatory quality, social Stability safety nets and labor protection, labor and agricultural markets, personal security, and basic rights, including recognition of identity, property, and fair treatment by government. Together these factors comprise a “funnel,” depicted in Figure , with more macro-factors at the top, meso-factors related to interaction with the market in the middle layers, and more personal micro-influences at the base. Our findings are also presented in order, from top-to-bottom of the funnel.
GOVERNMENT AND SYSTEMS STABILITY INFLUENCE ATLAS CHAPTER Macroeconomic policy and management
Governance and regulation Small Enterprises, Unlimited Stabilizing Jobs and Gigs Social and labor protection Consumption Floors and Nets Financial sector and inclusion Inclusive Financialization
Agricultural and labor markets Big Data, Small Devices
Public safety and emergency services Collective Security
Identity, individual land and property rights Personhood and Rights
INIVIDUALS AND FIRMS
When people and firms are supported in all of these dimensions, they have the confidence and predictability required to invest in their own futures, the means of investing at acceptable levels of risk and of capturing the returns on their investments, and economic resilience to shocks and stresses. Access to services and supports across the funnel ultimately helps ensure sufficient stability of income and consumption to allow economic advancement even when confronted with volatility. Stability-enhancing policies and programs such as retirement and unemployment benefits, labor standards, and crop insurance are traditional hallmarks of more advanced economies. Outside of the European Union, many social protections are linked to employment in the formal sector and tend to develop in middle-income countries as national wealth and formal sector employment rises. In lower- and lower- middle income countries, the vast majority who are own-account and contributing family workers—for example, those engaged in subsistence agriculture or mixed livelihoods—lack access to work-based social and labor protections, and households and communities typically bear the full risk of their economic participation. e current trend towards non-standard work and risk of elimination of formal sector jobs through automation calls into question the viability of existing work-linked social protection mechanisms at several levels of this funnel, and makes the pathway out of extreme instability for lower-income country workers unclear.
Our holistic view of economic stability departs from the common understanding in the global development community, where stability is often treated as a macroeconomic condition or a social outcome of economic prosperity. Many economists value macroeconomic and regulatory predictability but neglect the micro-foundations that $ allow people to prosper from stability. Stability as a goal may not be exciting enough to attract the attention of donor governments and agencies. And in some contexts, stability is confused with stagnation, framed as an alternative to economic advancement rather than as a critical enabler. Past work supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and our own research suggest that bringing stability out of the “background” and into the center of the global development conversation can improve performance of global efforts to achieve inclusive economic growth.
III In addition to the widespread concerns about volatility in global labor markets and the future of work, we identified two big trends that are expanding the private and public- Big Trends private provision of services that support of economic stability: the democratization Enabling of data access on mobile devices and the trend towards more inclusive financialization. Innovation e rapid expansion of mobile phone technology in the developing world, including mobile data services on smartphones, and associated technology trends that make advanced data and analytics services available through applications delivered to these smartphones, has opened up a world of innovation across all of the layers of the stability funnel. Extraordinary levels of data power are now being delivered via commercial and non-commercial applications to very poor users in developing countries, and to less poor but financially unstable citizens of the high-income world, in ways that were impossible just a few years ago. New business models leveraging this technological revolution are also enabled by financialization—“the increasing role of financial motives, financial markets, financial actors and financial institutions in the operation of the domestic and international economies.” e financial sector has unleashed a great deal of interest, creativity, and capital on the global development agenda, moving beyond microfinance first into mobile payment and lending, often with donor encouragement. More importantly, the financial sector – often in partnership with global development actors – is actively developing data-driven lending and products to spread financial risk that is traditionally borne entirely by poor individuals, particularly small agricultural producers and firms, but also formal sector workers with unstable incomes worldwide. e data that formerly “financially invisible” mobile users generate allows banks to more accurately assess risks and more confidently extend new credit and insurance products while preventing over-indebtedness of borrowers.
For the purpose of this work, we define innovation broadly to include “anything different than standard practice that has potential for radical social, environmental, or economic impact.”
IV e Atlas of Innovation for Economic Stability presents examples of how governments, donors, implementing partners, civil society organizations, and Innovations entrepreneurs work to deploy these and related technologies and approaches—as well for Economic as hybrid models combining old and new approaches—at each level of the stability Stability “funnel.” We found strong and diverse innovation “hot spots” in India, Kenya, and the U.S., with Indonesia standing out for the use of data and innovation tools in government, and Brazil innovating in public safety-related domains. e majority of innovations we discovered are privately-provided and enabled by mobile technology and data, though we identified several pockets of significant government and donor participation in catalyzing or scaling innovation. Innovations are presented in seven topical chapters with a separate chapter on India. At the top of the stability funnel, governmental issues dominate. In the area of macroeconomic management—a cornerstone of stability that is not synonymous with innovation—the Government of Indonesia is enhancing macroeconomic forecasting with real-time transaction and shipping data to support its inclusive growth agenda.
Innovations that simplify or enable small businesses to cope with their regulatory environments appear in the chapter titled Small Enterprises, Unlimited. ese include mobile technologies to improve MSME access to legal and regulatory compliance services from Kenya, Uganda, and Nigeria, as well as regulatory reform in Jordan to recognize women’s home-based businesses, and the use of Human Centered Design to improve business registration processes in Indonesia. Two chapters explore innovations in social and labor protection, which are traditional areas of government leadership. Consumption Floors and Nets are targeted, government-driven social protection programs. e Atlas profiles evolving cash transfer systems in Mexico, Ethiopia, Indonesia, the Dominican Republic, and India. e most innovative of these are incorporating new interfaces with privately-developed digital payment and savings technologies. Experiments with universal basic income in Finland and UNICEF’s global innovation strategy for cash transfers are also explored. Stabilizing Jobs and Gigs focuses on work-linked innovations that help both employees and non-standard workers cope with present and future instability. ese include several technology-enabled efforts by global brands to encourage worker welfare and labor standards compliance; privately-provided worker benefits in Vietnam and China that extend credit and build worker loyalty; and two novel uses of real-time labor market information to improve skills investment decisions from the U.S. Additionally, benefits for domestic and informal sector workers in the U.S. and Peru are featured. What is notable is the limited role of government in each of these areas—a significant departure from traditional labor protection practices. In the middle strata of the funnel, we explore new interfaces between livelihoods and the market that enable people and small firms to confidently save and invest in the future, smooth income and consumption, insure against catastrophic risks, and make better production decisions. Inclusive Financialization highlights diverse data-driven financial services and platforms that reduce instability, smooth consumption, and build assets for people and firms. ese innovations span women’s savings in Tanzania, data-informed agricultural and livestock insurance in China, India, Nepal, and Africa- wide, inclusive digital payment platforms in Mali, and agricultural leasing in Nigeria, as well as several technologies that provide direct assistance navigating personal finances or smoothing inconsistent income while saving for the future in the U.S. Similarly, innovations featured in Big Data, Small Devices (Better Livelihoods) draw on financial technology, but are more focused on advanced uses of data and analytics to improve livelihoods, particularly for subsistence farmers. Integrated, data- powered, and personalized farming or fishing advice, sometimes combined with access to credit, is in operation in India, Indonesia, Senegal, Uganda, and Zimbabwe, with voice-response services provided to expand access among low-literacy users in India. Two Kenyan innovations also link farmers to urban markets and assess smallholder creditworthiness. Closer to the base of the funnel, stability issues become more focused on micro- foundations: access to personal security and rights. Collective Security highlights entrepreneurial, citizen- and government-led innovations that address acute gaps in public safety. Peer-to-peer or social models from Brazil and Kenya are highlighted,
along with technology-enabled improvements in emergency response from El Salvador and Indonesia. Two innovations specifically focused on women’s safety in urban environments, one in the U.S. and a rapidly-spreading data-driven model from India. e final topical chapter on Personhood and Rights presents innovations that help marginalized groups—women in particular—to assert rights to identity, property, and fair treatment—both through improved policy channels and in private technology- enabled efforts. e Atlas profiles efforts to strengthen women’s rights to land, property, livelihoods, and health care enabled by social media and technology in Burundi, India, Pakistan, and throughout South Asia; expanding access to formal justice for poor and vulnerable people in Haiti and Bangladesh; mobile technologies that help citizens hold government to account in providing rights and basic services in Brazil and Cambodia; and new and novel uses of blockchain-based digital identities for refugees and vulnerable migrants in Jordan and throughout Southeast Asia. We reserve a special chapter for India, which has emerged in the last decade as the world’s most dynamic lab for stability-enhancing innovations. e India Stack is a “public good” open data exchange system that combines biometric digital identities, verified payments, and secure storage and signature of digital documents, upon which new entrepreneurial innovation for stability can flourish. Enhanced financial literacy, micro- lending to underserved businesswomen, and advanced services to farmers, in addition to the innovations profiled elsewhere in the Atlas, complement these efforts to build a new digital infrastructure for economic inclusion. If India’s public-private experiment is successful bringing hundreds of millions of rural poor into the economic mainstream, the approach will represent an entirely new political economy of economic inclusion. roughout the Atlas, we also profile nine diverse individuals and groups of innovators in-depth. ey include technology entrepreneurs, local and international NGOs, civil society networks, government initiatives, and multi-stakeholder partnerships from India (), Indonesia, Kenya (), Pakistan, Peru, and the U.S., as well as one global institution (UNICEF). Each shares a commitment to improving stability for individuals and communities. is diversity of innovation origins serves to dispel the notion that innovation and resulting entrepreneurship are driven primarily by “lone wolves:” almost none of these innovators worked alone. e reality is that innovations relevant to this topic often have a “driver”— a committed innovator or small group who drive their vision into reality—but also rely on a spectrum of social and inter-organizational collaboration.
V Conclusions and Recommendations e purpose of the Atlas is to present novel and compelling innovations related to economic stability. Nonetheless, five broader conclusions and recommendations for global development emerged from analysis of and reflection on our findings.
First, economic stability is central to the global development agenda and should be identified and promoted as a cross-cutting enabler. Economic stability is closely related to many well-established inclusive development objectives, including at least six of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and more than twenty targets. However, because the concept of stability straddles several disciplines it does not have a coherent or unified constituency, and is often absent from the global development dialogue. Stakeholders in global development can strengthen disciplinary conversations by recognizing economic stability as a natural, cross-cutting
enabler of their development goals. Donors can incorporate stability-related objectives and indicators into programs designed to achieve their own objectives and the SDGs. Government, multilateral, and donor economists can more deliberately prioritize the dimensions of stability that impact household- and firm-level decision-making, while also exploring how to harness new data about private financial and non-financial services uptake to complement assessments of economic performance. Impact investors supporting business models that improve livelihoods can and should also purse income stability alongside income growth as an investment objective and impact measurement.
Second, dynamic approaches to economic stability are needed to keep up with the pace of technology-induced change in the economy. To cope with accelerated technological change and resulting volatility, new approaches to stability should work to prepare people for a rapidly changing future by creating adaptive capacity to thrive in rapidly changing conditions as well as greater capacity to anticipate and prepare for change. Most of the innovations featured here support adaptive capacity, but a Dynamic Resilience approach will also harness artificial intelligence, machine learning, predictive analytics, and other emerging technologies to enhance anticipatory capacity, providing better information about likely futures and products and services that reduce risk.
ird, learn from India as its new public-private political economy of stability innovation emerges. e India Stack provides an exciting new model for supporting economic stability. Built to facilitate open data interchange and explicitly encouraging entrepreneurial participation, India’s emerging digital ecosystem invites a deliberate re-thinking of the appropriate balance between public and private provision and the infrastructure and agreements required to make such a model succeed. Many new and potentially transferrable lessons will emerge from India’s experience in promoting competition among entrepreneurs, avoiding the creation of new private monopolies, maintaining open protocols for data access, and establishing clear regulatory frameworks for protection of citizens, their data, and the public interest.
Fourth, global development actors can incorporate stability-enhancing innovation directly into their programming and support new pro-innovation arrangements in partner countries. Donors and global development actors should also consider how their programs—and the local systems they wish to strengthen—can more directly incorporate the services provided by innovative local and global entrepreneurs. ey can also help facilitate the co-creation process by which national governments and local stakeholders find a locally-appropriate balance of public and private initiatives that acknowledges the effectiveness of public-private solutions to key stability challenges. When supporting development of legislation, policy, or programs in relevant areas, they can advocate for effective divisions of labor between public and private efforts, and for attention to local innovation.
Finally, development partners should “layer” innovations into their interventions and adopt a Modular Mindset. Donors and local and international development partners should also explore how “layering” multiple innovations into their programs can more powerfully support development objectives. A locally-appropriate combination of traditional interventions
and support for uptake or integration of multiple appropriate innovations at different levels of the “funnel”—aligned with local capacities and challenges—is likely to be most effective. Building programs around technologies that implementers do not own or control will require new entrepreneurialism and flexibility in programming and funding approaches and a modular mindset that critically assesses how new and evolving innovations connect with emerging data sources and financial infrastructure. All of these recommendations rest on the capacity, particularly among poor and vulnerable people, to effectively select and use new innovations which, in-turn, depends on basic and financial literacy, digital access, and critical judgement about the use of services. Ensuring that base-of-pyramid users worldwide can access and use new innovations is likely to remain a central focus of global development practice in the coming decades.
Epstein, Gerald A. Financialization and the World Economy, . Edward Elgar. p. .
Jonathan Wong, UN ESCAP, personal communication, .
Lele, Uma, and Sambuddha Goswami, e Fourth Industrial Revolution, Agricultural and Rural Innovation, and Implications for Public Policy and Investments: A Case of India. Agricultural Economics, Volume , Issue S, November (b), Pages: —.
2 Forewords
The Atlas of Innovation for Economic Stability 9 Foreword from payments without ruining her credit score, . or accumulating expensive debt. It’s about The Rockefeller having a transparent environment that fosters innovation and risk-taking by young Foundation entrepreneurs. When these conditions are absent, as they increasingly are for Does stability matter? is is a many vulnerable people across the world, reasonable question in response to we see the slow and inevitable erosion of growing evidence that the lives of poor opportunity and upward mobility. and vulnerable communities across the world are increasingly characterized by When we began to study this, we noticed an unpredictability and insecurity. ere does abundance of policy, finance and technical appear to be an emerging consensus that innovations in play that enable people to instability has become an underlying driver cope with volatile and erratic conditions, of chronic poverty and under-development. asymmetrical information, and a lack of Increased volatility in the global economy, protection. But we also found that these
Forewords climate change, rapid technological changes, are not being advanced in a coherent and shifting labor and employment trends and coordinated manner. As we seek to have left many workers and small businesses transform systems that lock people in in the st century without the traditional cycles of hardship, we must rally greater protections and security they might once attention to the importance of stability as a have expected. Workers in many OECD development goal. economies are now more susceptible to e Atlas of Innovation for Economic abrupt changes in employment status, health Stability is a pioneering effort to curate the insurance and other benefits traditionally most exciting innovations already being linked to jobs of the past. In the developing implemented across the world, and to give world, smallholder farmers struggle to adapt them greater visibility in order to promote to shifting weather patterns that render discourse and action by governments, traditional farming practices redundant. And donors, non-profits, and impact investors. around the world, employment is becoming It is truly exciting to see what has emerged. fragmented into contract, temporary and Both the individual examples as well as shift work where people struggle to control the analysis on overall trends and sectors and predict their weekly earnings. provides a rich base of insight about how, For some the concept of stability suggests and why, we should put the goal of stability a lack of dynamism, slow change, and even more at the heart of our efforts. entrenched practices that hold people back. One can certainly paint a picture of ‘bad stability’; the deep-rooted grasp of feudalism in rural South Asia, or the ability of brutal Ashvin Dayal authoritarian regimes to endure while Associate Vice impoverishing their citizens. Clearly these President & are not the “stable” systems we seek. In the Managing Director, context of a rapidly changing world, it is Smart Power time to focus on the upside of stability. Stability is about a farmer having the information and confidence to invest in Alyson Wise a new crop variety to improve his yields, Associate or a factory worker knowing her shift Director, Jobs schedule for the next month so she can estimate her earnings and manage her
Foreword from and a new mindset that encourages new actors to come to the table. e Atlas invites . FHI readers to think about stability in a holistic way that straddles global development Advances in technology are changing and disciplines and looks at the diverse range of disrupting our world. Our challenge is to use factors influencing economic stability, from the powerful new tools that are transforming macroeconomic management to financial our daily lives in ways that expand what is inclusion to physical security. It is a unique possible in global development. at is why attempt to visualize all of these factors I am delighted by the collaboration between as an integrated whole. is allows us to FHI and e Rockefeller Foundation to see how entrepreneurs and civil society create this Atlas of Innovation for Economic leaders, governments, and development Stability. It is not only a groundbreaking organizations are bringing new products example of tech for good, it also shows how and services to life in order to reach shared organizations can work together to support development goals. the innovators committed to improving the
I have heard the idea of “innovation for Forewords lives of people around the world. stability” derided as an oxymoron. However, As a global development organization this Atlas and the research behind it committed to addressing complex human shows us that stability is not the same as development challenges, FHI is stagnation; rather, it is the solid foundation continuously looking at how we can on which progress is built. My hope is deliver greater impact. e Atlas features that this Atlas and the thousands of other innovations that reflect our organization’s collaborative efforts to use tech for good will strategic priorities and commitments to: offer new ways of seeing our changing world, using evidence-based and research-driven and in so doing, create new opportunities approaches; supporting new businesses for for a more inclusive, prosperous, and social impact; employing digital solutions stable future. to improve decision-making, enhance efficiencies, and address development challenges at scale; expanding opportunities for meaningful economic participation; and Patrick Fine increasing equity in the United States and CEO, FHI around the world. If we are to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, we will need new approaches, new types of partnerships,
3 Introduction to Innovation for Stability
12 The Atlas of4 Innovation5 for6 Economic7 Stability8 9 10 11 12 Building on previous work to define the landscape and key indicators of inclusive economies, in 2017 The Rockefeller Foundation provided support to FHI 360 to engage in a global search to landscape innovations that promote economic stability for individuals, communities, firms, and countries, with an emphasis on the welfare of poor and vulnerable people worldwide. This Atlas of Innovation for Economic Stability is the output of a global research and crowdsourcing effort.
The Atlas of Innovation for Economic Stability 13 Introduction to Innovation for Stability
“Economic stability is the ability to meet basic needs and to prosper even in the face of economic, political, or social volatility.”
I At a time when the IMF is projecting bright economic prospects for the global economy and the World Bank is projecting that emerging markets will drive the global economy Why are we closer to its full growth potential in , it may be easy to forget the continued need interested in for more inclusive economies that deliver economic stability to poor and vulnerable stability? people around the world, both in developing and developed countries. e current wave of economic good news has not fundamentally altered the basic story of a slow and imbalanced economic recovery from the financial crisis, the aftermath of which accelerated growth in wealth and income inequality, economic fragility of the middle class across the developed world, leaving unchanged the basic precariousness of livelihoods for most people who live in lower- and middle-income countries. e Financial Diaries, published in , found that many working Americans hold multiple jobs and save diligently, but experience wide month-to-month income swings resulting from inconsistent work schedules, remaining in a state of persistent anxiety. CNN Money summarized that “Americans are desperate for more stability.” A Federal Reserve Survey similarly found that % of Americans reported that they did not have enough money to cover a emergency expense. Across OECD countries, incomes of the bottom % of the workforce have still not recovered from the financial crisis, and approximately % of workers experience “in-work poverty,” with some countries such as Spain and Greece experiencing rates around %. Real wages in the UK also fell each year between and . A Pew poll also found that % of Americans would prefer to have financial stability rather than move up the income ladder. Guy Standing and others refer to the Precariat, “a new socioeconomic class comprising not just those who cannot find a job, but also those who are informally, casually, or otherwise insecurely employed.” is represents a fundamental change in orientation from an aspirational economy to one that prioritizes survival, and one particularly challenging to political and social stability in the high-income world. In this erosion of economic stability, formerly secure workers in high-income countries find themselves experiencing some of the precariousness that many citizens of the developing world experience as a baseline condition in their economic lives. Most individuals in the world do not enjoy the stable employment structures characteristic of the OECD, and a substantial proportion subsist as non-standard or own-account workers in mixed-livelihood activities, rather than in formal, stable employment
Note: references appear in Appendix
arrangements. A recent paper by USAID Chief Economist Louise Fox and Upaasna Kaul using data from ILO illustrates that the proportion of wage and salaried (formal sector) workers varies greatly with country income level. In high-income economies, % workers are wage and salaried, while in upper-middle income economies this drops to %. It is % in lower-middle income and % in lower income economies. As a result, many are excluded from public social and labor protection systems linked to formal employment to the extent that they are in-place. ese situations require own-account and non-standard workers to adopt complex financial coping and risk management strategies to ensure both consumption and business investment. us, the challenges to economic security in the U.S. and across OECD countries brings the situation of poor and vulnerable people around the world into alignment. Yet, paradoxically, throughout much of the developing world, it is a time of great optimism. Between and , the number of poor people in the developing world fell by half, from . billion to million. Lower and lower-middle income Ethiopia, Nepal, India, Tanzania, Djibouti, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Philippines grew by .% or more in . e technology sectors of Kenya, Indonesia, China, and Vietnam advanced significantly in recent years, while both India and China have produced groundbreaking innovation. Broad-based commitment to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals among government, corporate, financial, and entrepreneurial sectors promises more progress in an ambitious integrated development model, despite many big questions about what the world economy will look like in . Nonetheless, as lower-income economies grow and develop, they are experiencing very different performance in achieving inclusive development, as measured by World Economic Forum's Inclusive Development Index, and income inequality remains a persistent and growing challenge. We see three big trends working together to create conditions for economic stability that are relevant to both developed and developing country contexts, and to some extent explaining this paradox. Each of these trends is widely reported, but this reporting is not always explicitly linked to economic stability and may fail to consider the prospects of other convergences on the horizon. ey include both a pending crisis and two inexorable trends. ree Big Trends Shaping Economic Stability . e pending crisis of the global future of work Economic stability has been on the agenda of high-income country policymakers because changes in the labor market wrought by the “third industrial revolution” of information and communications technology and the internet are now impossible to ignore. Since the s, technology-enabled globalization, offshoring of jobs as a prominent feature of industrial organization, increased automation, and flexible and contingent employment arrangements have been on the rise. e recent ascendance of the “platform economy” and resulted blurring of the boundaries between employees and firms is only the latest internet-enabled development in a progression towards non-standard employment structures (also known as casualization) in high- and upper- middle-income economies. ese now account for up to a third of the current US labor market and more than half of current job creation, and more than half of employment growth in the European Union between and .
Now a “Fourth Industrial Revolution (FIR)”—centered on industrial and services automation, and artificial intelligence— threatens to radically dislocate global production arrangements, economic development trajectories, employment patterns, and, ultimately, livelihoods across a wider swath of the world’s economy. FIR brings high risks of eliminating the jobs of middle-skill and middle-income workers worldwide. According to a seminal review, % of jobs in OECD countries, % in U.S., are at risk of automation. e at-risk numbers are higher for developing countries like Ethiopia (%), Uzbekistan (%), China (%) and India (%), suggesting that these changes will impact economies that aim for industrialization as a pathway to productive transformation. Calls for a new, global social contract from across the policy and development communities to address these oncoming changes are hampered by the lack of certainty about what this future will look like in practice.
. Democratization of data access on mobile devices: an enabling opportunity e ubiquity of hand-held digital technology is transforming the ways in which people—and poor and vulnerable people worldwide in particular—obtain services, access information, and connect with others. e number of unique mobile subscribers surpassed five billion in . Today, nearly everyone in the developed world and % of the population in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) use mobile devices. By , nearly three billion people worldwide will own smartphones, and the forecast in Africa for is double that of . GSMA reported that . billion of the . billion global mobile subscribers live in LMICs, while more than mobile payment services are now operational. ere is no doubt that many barriers to accessing the digital economy remain for people living in rural and remote areas with limited coverage, and for the approximately % lacking basic service and % lacking broadband internet, particularly the poorest of the poor. However, there is also a broad consensus that the expansion of mobile telephones and connected internet devices are radically changing the way “people handle money, work, learn and participate in government.” As early as , Deloitte and GSMA found that a % increase in mobile penetration yielded % increase in long-term economic output (total factor productivity or TFP). As capacity has expanded for use of more powerful mobile devices in lower-income contexts, the deliberate deployment of mobiles for development (MD) has also advanced in tandem with this growing user base. is coincides with a revolution in the incorporation of big data and analytics into business processes and a global boom in data-driven entrepreneurship, facilitated by the expansion of Software as a Service (SaaS). is lowers the cost of accessing both data and sophisticated analytics to a point at which it can be easily built into commercial and non-commercial applications aimed at even very poor users in developing countries, and to less poor but financially unstable citizens of the high-income world. ese new capabilities have brought about a period of technology-driven innovation in both the public and private sectors. Beyond the expansion of digital payments, key innovations have yielded important gains in stability among, for example, subsistence and small-scale farmers in low income contexts. ose that can access these technologies now have at their disposal extraordinary levels of data power and data- enabled financial products that were impossible only a few years ago. And, in contexts where stable employment is not the norm, access to platform-based work enabled by mobile phones reduces the costs of looking for work—raising and in many cases stabilizing income.
. Financialization’s inclusive reach New business models leveraging this technological revolution are also enabled by a third factor. Finance is intended to direct capital to its most productive uses and spread the effects of risk among large numbers of people. Relatedly, financialization refers to “the increasing role of financial motives, financial markets, financial actors and financial institutions in the operation of the domestic and international economies,” and to the period of recent history—since or so—in which financial innovation has become a source of growth, productivity, and consumption, including in how capital is intermediated or channeled from savers to borrowers. Securitization of mortgages, and bonds to support microfinance institutions, and venture capital investment, among a huge array of other products and services, are manifestations of this trend. In this process, financial markets and technologies have grown to play a larger role than traditional banks in channeling capital to users. e global financial crisis tarnished the already mixed reputation of financialization, with mainstream development stakeholders joining many longtime critics. e critique is summarized as follows: “While those who have extra assets to invest enjoy increasing returns, those who cannot join such markets suffer more, enlarging the wealth gap of the entire society.” e role of a predatory and weakly- regulated global financial sector is retrospectively blamed for stability-destroying trends including global, regional, and national financial crises, job-destroying private equity investment strategies, high and increasing levels of household debt, commodity price volatility, the primacy of shareholder value over the interests of workers, social stakeholders, and the environment, and expansion of wealth inequality and a “winner- take-all” economy. Despite many valid criticisms, financialization has also unleashed a great deal of interest, creativity, and capital on achieving the global development agenda. e microfinance industry’s development and maturation was an important step in financializing global development, having normalized lending to the very poor as an element of aid and growth strategies, later creating pathways for larger-scale capital market investment in the sector. In the current period, we see both financial innovation for the poor, moving beyond microfinance first into mobile payment and lending and new savings vehicles, often with donor encouragement, and the deployment of significant private capital (broadly impact investing) to ventures that create shared value for companies and “base of pyramid” consumers. Impact investing in developing economies has grown into a billion market as of , while private equity and venture investing from the middle-income world are also proliferating, supporting new generations of developing country entrepreneurs. Most importantly, the global financial sector is now actively developing data-driven analytic, lending and insurance products—often in partnership with global development actors—to spread financial risk that is traditionally borne entirely by poor individuals—particularly small agricultural producers and firms, but also formal sector workers with unstable incomes—worldwide. More inclusive forms of financialization are emerging in tandem with the access to customers provided by expansion of mobile technology. In a virtuous circle, the data that these formerly “financially invisible” users generate through their digital activities also allows banks to more accurately assess risks and more confidently extend new credit and insurance products, while avoiding over-indebtedness of borrowers.
e impacts of these oncoming and in-process global trends span development disciplines and set the stage for our exploration of economic stability.
II e starting point for our innovation search is a definition developed for e Rockefeller Foundation by Benner and Pastor which begins with the proposition Process and that a stable economy is one in which “individuals, communities, businesses and Opportunity governments have a sufficient degree of confidence in the future and an increased for Action ability to predict the outcome of their economic decisions. Individuals, households, communities and enterprises are secure enough to invest in their future. Economic systems are increasingly resilient to shocks and stresses, especially to disruptions with a disproportionate impact on poor or vulnerable communities.” ey operationalize this definition within three broad areas. . Public and private confidence in the future and ability to predict the outcome of economic decisions, good macroeconomic management, and quality of business regulations, particularly those that encourage private sector development; . Members of society are able to invest in their future through appropriate financial and insurance products and to live in an environment with adequate property rights, rules-based governance and domestic security, such that those investments can come to fruition; . Economic resilience to shocks and stresses through social and labor protection systems, a diverse economy, and public and emergency services that respond effectively to people in need. is formulation of stability deliberately defines disciplinary boundaries of global development practice, seeking a holistic view of this key dimension of an inclusive economy. e Rockefeller Foundation also encouraged FHI to expand our search beyond the limits of this definition to “look everywhere” for innovations that impact economic stability. e difference between this approach and the standard treatment of “stability” in global development appears in the box below. FHI expanded the search frame beyond the original definition in two ways reflecting our intention to focus on the interface between new innovations and the lived experience of stability. First, we sought to include innovations that directly promote stability outcomes, particularly those that directly contribute to stability of income, consumption and assets. Second, we sought innovations that address the deeper foundations of stability, with an emphasis on basic personhood and rights (identity). is is because meaningful participation in economic systems continues
e concept of economic stability as we approach it does not align well with the many Stability and disciplines that comprise the global development landscape. Typically “stability” arises in Development global development conversations either in the context of macroeconomic stability, or with Practice reference to “political and social stability.” Even in comprehensive assessments of social protection programs, such as a recent Overseas Development Institute review for DFAT, stability was framed as an upstream (macroeconomic stability and growth) or downstream (social stability) goal, rather than as a household- or community-level objective. It is usually treated as an outcome of other economic growth processes—freedom from macroeconomic crises and destabilizing political events—rather than as a critical factor in the lived experience of people and firms, and one that exerts significant influence on their economic decisions. And in some contexts, stability is confused with stagnation, framed as an alternative to economic advancement rather than a critical enabler.
The Atlas of Innovation for Economic Stability Figure : Domains of Economic Stability
to rest upon legal or other forms of formal recognition of individuals’ identity and rights, particularly for women and other marginalized groups, and that these are often disregarded even in places with strong contract enforcement and rules-based governance. e resulting model for stability that guided our search is captured in figure .
Research Process An intensive research process followed in which FHI , with input from development stakeholders, researched current innovation in livelihoods and resilience, financial inclusion, business environment reform, data and digital development, agriculture, social protection, identities and rights, and refugee issues. In parallel, we conducted a broad call for submissions from the global development community on a dedicated crowdsourcing platform hosted at Crowd. We also interviewed approximately influential men and women in global development to understand how stability is viewed and whether the concept has resonance across high- middle- and low-income contexts.
Figure : Out of 100 Innovations… General Findings on Use data Innovations Multi-stakeholder programs or partnerships Directly or indirectly related to financial services Explicitly include a technology solution Related to legal or regulatory issues Principally government policy or program Have a Peer-to-Peer or social element
WHAT EXACTLY do we mean by “innovation?”
Innovation seems to be everywhere in global development, rising from obscurity to widespread practice in the space of a decade. Several donors have launched initiatives and funds to support and promote innovation—including USAID’s Global Development Lab and Development Innovation Ventures, the Global Innovation Fund (multi-donor), and Australian DFAT’s Innovation X-Change and new Emerging Markets Impact Investment Fund. Donors and other global development stakeholders (e.g. MIT, Mastercard Foundation) increasingly use “innovation challenges” to catalyze new approaches to specific development issues, sponsoring hackathons and startup weekends and evolving private sector innovation methodologies like “lean” and human centered-design into programming. Innovative implementing partners including Mercy Corps, PACT, Oxfam, and FHI 360 have incorporated support for entrepreneur-led innovation initiatives directly into their project structures, or created early stage investment funds to support them.
But what exactly do we mean by innovation? For the purpose of this work, we adopt a broad definition of innovation as “Anything different than standard practice that has potential for radical social, environmental, or economic impact.”29 This broad definition is consistent with our multi-sectoral research mission, and also with the ultimate goal of mainstreaming high-impact practices into global development programs.
Profit Network Structure Process Product Product Services Channel Brand Customer Model Performance System Engagement
CONFIGURATION OFFERING EXPERIENCE
Source: https://www.doblin.com/ten-types
It also accommodates more nuanced innovation typologies such as the Doblin 10 Types model, to provide a language for understanding innovations and assessing their significance.30 In the Doblin model, there are three broad types of innovation, each with several sub-types. Configuration refers to the workings of an enterprise and its business system, and includes common “process” innovations; Offering refers to the performance of the core product or service or multiple ones that compose “robust and scalable systems…fostered through interoperability, modularity, integration, and other ways of [connecting] distinct and disparate offerings.” Experience refers to the customer-facing elements of the enterprise or business system, and includes sub-types related to services, distribution channels, and customer engagement. Innovations presented in this Atlas fall into at least one of these categories, many straddle categories, and a few transformative efforts create entirely new interconnected product systems, and related brands and channels, as in the India Stack.
20 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 III e result of this process was a compendium of over innovation profiles obtained between July and October of , of which had comparable data available for What We analysis. From these we curated the most compelling innovations to present in this Found Atlas, with broad geographic and sectoral representation. e Atlas presents brief and in-depth profiles of key innovations, as well as profiles of innovators intended to shed light on the process by which these innovations came about. Innovations are presented in seven topical chapters while the level of public-private innovation in India merited its own chapter. ese are:
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A New Top-to-Bottom Stability Model In the process of analyzing our findings, the research led us to a more compelling way to present the key influences on economic stability—one that aligns better with the disciplines of global development and encourages structured, holistic thinking. Together, the seven topical areas map to a “funnel” that depicts influences on economic stability at seven nested levels. ese encompass macro-, meso- and micro-level stability issues and provide context for the innovations that address each level. Starting from the top of the funnel, higher levels address the broadest transnational (e.g. macroeconomic management) and national (e.g. regulatory, social protection) systems
and policies. Middle layers of the funnel deal with interactions between individuals or firms and markets, including labor, financial, and agricultural markets. At the bottom of the funnel, securing personal resilience through physical security and individual and group rights predominate.
Figure : Stability "Funnel"
GOVERNMENT AND SYSTEMS STABILITY INFLUENCE ATLAS CHAPTER Macroeconomic policy and management
Governance and regulation Small Enterprises, Unlimited Stabilizing Jobs and Gigs Social and labor protection Consumption Floors and Nets Financial sector and inclusion Inclusive Financialization
Agricultural and labor markets Big Data, Small Devices
Public safety and emergency services Collective Security
Identity, individual land and property rights Personhood and Rights
INIVIDUALS AND FIRMS
In accordance with our stability model, when people and firms are supported in all of these dimensions, they have the confidence and predictability required to invest in their own futures, the means of investing at acceptable levels of risk and of capturing the returns on their investments, and economic resilience to shocks and stresses. Access to services and supports across the funnel can ultimately help ensure sufficient stability of income and consumption to allow economic advancement even when confronted with volatility. Conversely, deficiencies at any level of the funnel can prevent the benefits of stability at higher levels from reaching individuals, households, and firms. For example, lack of a verified identity often prevents people from accessing social protection programs; lack of access to financial products and services diminishes the benefit of macroeconomic stability for poor and vulnerable people. e remainder of this section provides a review of the major innovations presented in each corresponding chapter.
Innovations by Chapter At the top of the funnel, governmental issues dominate. e highest level— macroeconomic management—is the domain of ministries of finance, central banks, and multilateral economists. Macroeconomic stability is widely recognized as a cornerstone of all stability efforts. It is not as amenable to entrepreneurial or bottom- up innovation as other dimensions, though the Atlas features cutting-edge work by the Government of Indonesia incorporating big data into macroeconomic forecasting. Governance and regulation disproportionally impact the operators of micro and small businesses who are often poor and/or vulnerable and may lack the skills, time, and resources to navigate these complex systems. Innovations that simplify or enable small businesses to cope with their regulatory environments appear in Small Enterprises,
Unlimited (Chapter ). e Atlas highlights promising regulatory reform efforts around commercial courts in Liberia, use of human-centered design to ease business registration in Indonesia, and FHI ’s efforts to lift restrictions on women’s home- based businesses in Jordan. Entrepreneurs are also providing the services to micro and small businesses, helping them navigate legal and regulatory compliance. Sauti, a mobile-based platform from Kenya, empowers micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) to engage in cross-border trade and report corruption, and Uganda’s mSME Garage provides business guidance and legal services through mobile phones to support business growth. In Nigeria, Orodata helps micro-business owners know their rights and regulations, while DIYLaw provides a portal for simplified business registration and access to lawyers. Two sections explore new forms of social and labor protection, which are traditional areas of government leadership. Stabilizing Jobs and Gigs (Chapter ) focuses on work-linked innovations that help both employees and non-standard workers cope with present and future instability. Some of these, including LaborLink and Workplace Options, Golden Dreams, and the Strategic Partnership for Supply Chain Transformation are forging new technology-enabled alliances between global brands, local employers, and employees to improve worker wellbeing and strengthen worker protections. MicroBenefits and MobiVi focus on privately-provided benefits to workers in Asia, while Burning Glass and Viridis Learning enable governments and workers in the U.S. alike to make data-driven decisions about their investments in skill development and learning. Alia provides a client-funded benefits system for domestic workers who are often self-employed, while the Pension Match system in Peru is piloting a system for providing retirement savings to informal workers in small firms. What is notable is the limited role of government in each of these areas—a significant departure from traditional labor protection practices.
Consumption Floor and Nets (Chapter ) are new forms of targeted social protection. While these broad-based efforts remain government-driven, the most innovative are beginning to incorporate new interfaces with privately-developed technologies, as in the entirely new political economy that is emerging in India through the India Stack. e Atlas features ambitious policy and program innovations in which new services are being built atop established cash transfer systems in Mexico, Ethiopia, and Indonesia and the Dominican Republic, while India provides a guaranteed annual minimum of paid workdays to rural residents. Less targeted initiatives, including th Month Pay in Latin America, and Finland’s experiment with Universal Basic Income, are also explored. Finally, the Atlas presents an in-depth report on how UNICEF “has adopted a cycle of work and phased activities and tools to support the introduction, expansion and improvement of cash transfer programs,” drawing on mobile and financial technology with program examples from South Africa, Iraq, and Nepal, among others. Innovations corresponding to the middle strata of the funnel deal with new interfaces between the livelihoods of individuals and small firms within the technological and financial system, which relate to their ability to confidently save and invest in the future, smooth income and consumption, insure against catastrophic risks, and make better production decisions. Inclusive Financialization (Chapter ) highlights diverse data-driven financial services and platforms that reduce instability, smooth consumption, and build assets for people and firms. ese innovations span savings, data-informed insurance, inclusive digital payment platforms, and leasing, as well
as assistance navigating the financial landscape. Modelo Peru is an interoperable national digital payments platform designed by the Peruvian Bankers Association to promote financial inclusion, while Wave Money establishes a mobile money platform to advance Myanmar’s financial infrastructure. In Tanzania, MyWORTH provides financially excluded women with real-time access to group loans through their mobile phones. Illustrating the progress of micro-insurance in reaching previously uninsurable clients, livestock insurance products for nomadic Yak herders in China, India, and Nepal reduce risks of catastrophic losses, while IFPRI’s Risk-Contingent Credit insurance solution automatically offsets small farmers’ loan payments when triggered by such risks as natural disasters and drops in crop yields and prices. Mali’s MyAgro provides small farmers with a scratch card-based credit and payments system for agricultural inputs combined with a bankless savings plan. In Nigeria, Hello Tractor helps farmers build productive assets with low-cost financing to purchase tractors and a mobile-based system for leasing them to nearby smallholders. In the U.S., Even is a subscription system that analyzes income patterns of employees with variable income, adding or subtracting from their bank balances automatically to smooth consumption and savings. Digit uses a predictive algorithm to help customers with variable incomes regularly save small amounts of money, while Prism consolidates bill payments for financially vulnerable households.
Similarly, innovations featured in Chapter , Big Data, Small Devices (Better Livelihoods), draw on financial technology, but are more focused on advanced uses of data and analytics to improve livelihoods, particularly for subsistence farmers. TCS Pride, led by IT giant Tata Consultancy Services in India, uses multiple data streams (market, weather, soil, pests, etc.) and predictive analytics to deliver personalized agricultural advice to Indian farmers throughout the planting, growing, harvest, and post-harvest phases. AgriFin, spearheaded by MercyCorps and partners in Indonesia, Uganda, and Zimbabwe, and enabled by villages’ LISA application, provide a suite of data products to improve access to agricultural information, validate field conditions for micro-insurance claims, track input distribution, and build credit histories. India’s Avaaj Otalo (VoiceAll) provides similar information via interactive voice response to hard-to-reach farmers, also overcoming both literacy, language, and smartphone penetration barriers. FHI ’s WISE application provides these services and information to fisherpeople in Senegal, integrated with mobile-based micro-lending digital payments. Kenya’s Twiga Foods implemented a mobile-based supply platform linking farmers with urban grocers, consolidating the produce market, minimizing post- harvest losses, and stabilizing markets, while FarmDrive pioneered a credit scoring algorithm for smallholder farmers, combining weather information, soil conditions, market access, and satellite imagery and self-reported revenue and expense data. Closer to the base of the funnel, stability issues become more focused on micro- foundations of economic stability: access to personal security and rights. Collective Security (Chapter ) highlights entrepreneurial, citizen- and government-led innovations that address acute gaps in public safety, particularly in urban areas in middle-income countries. In Brazil, Fogo Cruzado and Onde Tem Teroteio help Rio de Janiero residents collect real-time reports from citizens and police about gunfire, delivering instant alerts to nearby users. Starting in , police in El Salvador also used the Wireless Security (Seguridad Inalámbrica) application to share, map, and analyze data on crimes as they occured. Indonesia’s DARU draws on Jakarta’s open data architecture to improve delivery of firefighting services. Users of Kenya’s Usalama app can shake their phone to connect with emergency services, their families, and
INNOVATION FINDINGS Figure : Innovation origins by country income level % Low Income % Lower Middle Income
% Total Upper Middle Income Sample % High Income % Both Low and Lower middle income % High income serving mobile population % % % % % % Middle-income countries account for % of the innovations we profiled, but we also found numerous examples in both low and high-income countries. Figure presents the distribution by country income level.
Figure : Funding Innovation for Stability Main Funding Sources Number of Funding Sources Out of 84 innovations for which any data on funding was Out of 59 innovations for which we have available, the primary funding sources are: more detailed funder information:
Donor One funder Government Two funders Entrepreneur/ Business Multiple funders Community (CSO/NGO) Social Enterprise/ Non-Profit Were not funded Have unclear or unknown funding
nearby users, and share incident information. Designed for women by women, Chicago- based WatchMe is a fee-based mobile safety application that harnesses the user’s support network for scheduled check-ins and arrival notifications and emergency alerts. South Africa’s CrashDetech app automatically senses the impact of vehicle collisions, dispatches emergency services to the site, and provides customers’ medical information. India’s My SafetiPin provides a data-driven approach to safety for urban women, building off of neighborhood safety audits to provide advice on safe routes to destinations and a personal safety tracker. My SafetiPin’s audit method and resulting data are now used for public safety advocacy in more than cities worldwide and in a global partnership with Uber.
Economic stability must be built on legal or practical recognition of personhood, property, and identity—the deep foundation of all other aspects of stability. e final topical chapter on Personhood and Rights (Chapter ) presents innovations that help marginalized groups—women in particular—to assert these rights, both through improved policy channels and in private efforts using new technologies. Women’s rights to land and property are of particular importance. Burundi has undertaken Women’s Land Rights Sensitization, while the India-based #PropertyForHer movement works through an online and offline campaign to overcome socio-cultural barriers to women’s property ownership throughout South Asia. In Pakistan, doctHERS uses telemedicine to connect female doctors who would otherwise have been unable to practice with female patients who do not have access to medical care due to cultural prohibitions against visiting male doctors, simultaneously fortifying vocational and health rights for women.
In the area of land rights, Mozambique’s Land Law formally recognizes customary law and good faith occupation in land use claims, reducing conflict and setting the stage for economic development. Launched in , the Cadasta Foundation’s platform also provides low-cost digital tools for documenting land and resource rights and sharing them for advocacy and infrastructure planning globally. Village Courts in Bangladesh and Free Legal Services in Haiti offer more traditional approaches to expanding access to justice for poor and vulnerable people. To promote civic technology, Brazil’s DefeZap collects crowdsourced videos, photos, and text reports of extrajudicial violence allowing favela residents to report abuses and seek justice against perpetrators of state violence. Cambodia’s Transmit application provides citizens with digital means to register and track complaints to local governments, bringing more transparency and accountability to natural resource, justice, and human rights complaints. Two organizations are also applying blockchain approaches to digital identities: the Making Cents International/Banqu partnership in Jordan serves refugees as a foundation of financial inclusion, while iRespond uses a biometric identity secured on a blockchain to help protect vulnerable migrants against exploitation and to deliver health services in Southeast Asia.
We reserve a special chapter for India, which has emerged in the last decade as the world’s most dynamic lab for stability-enhancing innovations. In addition to innovations featured in previous chapters—Avaaj Otalo, Gandhi Rural Employment Act, SafetiPin, and #PropertyForHer—Chapter presents the India Stack, an open data exchange system that combines biometric digital identities (Aadhaar), verified payments, secure storage and signature of digital documents, and upon which new entrepreneurial products and services can be easily built. To build the financial literacy required to benefit from these groundbreaking innovations, MFIN Connect provides local language education on the use of digital identities, microfinance, and responsible use of credit. We also profile the PMMY microbusiness lending program, which proactively identifies and extends loans to small entrepreneurs, seventy-five percent of whom are women, and the LOOP application, also in use in Bangladesh, which helps small farmers aggregate their production for better prices and track sales and payments through a digital ledger. India is building “public goods” data systems on which entrepreneurial innovation for stability can flourish. If this public-private experiment is successful bringing hundreds of millions of rural poor into the economic mainstream, the approach will represent an entirely new political economy of economic inclusion.
About the Innovators Featured innovations were catalyzed by individual entrepreneurs, loosely-affiliated citizen networks, business associations, collaborative initiatives between government and the private sector, multi-stakeholder partnerships including non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and businesses, donor-government partnerships, and venture- backed challenges and competitions. roughout the Atlas, we profile nine diverse individuals and groups of innovators in-depth. Each shares a commitment to improving stability for individuals and communities through innovations in technology and the delivery of social and other services. is diversity of innovation origins serves to dispel the notion that innovation and resulting entrepreneurship are driven primarily by “lone wolves.” e reality is that innovations relevant to this topic often have a “driver”— a committed innovator or small group of innovators who drive their vision into reality—but also rely on a spectrum of social and inter-organizational collaboration. Increasingly, innovation is shared between initiators and their users in both a bottom-up and top-down manner, as in several peer-to-peer products featured here.
Almost none of the profiled innovators worked alone. Kalpana Viswanath, along with her husband, developed MySafetiPin, a unique mobile application to make cities in India safer for women, and Kamla Bhasin, the South Asia coordinator of One Billion Rising, led #PropertyForHer, collaborating with several NGOs and civil society groups. A group of young Kenyan programmers formed Usalama Tech Group to develop emergency services solutions for victims of crime and road accidents, while two Kenyan women, Rita Kimani and Peris Bosire founded the start-up FarmDrive after experiencing first-hand the challenges of growing up in smallholder farming communities. In Pakistan, social entrepreneur Dr. Asher Hasan, co-founded doctHERS to help bridge the gap in access to healthcare for vulnerable populations that he first witnessed while visiting the country as a child and later as a social entrepreneur. Institutions are also involved, sometimes with committed leaders driving innovation. Miguel Arce Tellez is a Peruvian banker who helped bring together a group of competing Peruvian banks and supporters to develop Modelo Peru to advance financial inclusion. As a leading voice in the future of work conversation in the United States and director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, Palak Shah founded Alia as part of her professional mission of helping disadvantaged workers. Indonesia’s Ministry of National Development Planning (BAPPENAS) and the UN’s Pulse Lab Jakarta work together to incorporate new data sources to promote inclusive economic growth. We also profile UNICEF, leveraging its two decades of experience with cash transfer programs to strengthen its social protection mission and enhance stability for children and families across the globe. e remainder of the Atlas presents brief and in-depth profiles of these innovations and innovators, and, in the final chapter, suggests some conclusions and recommendations related to how global development actors can support and enhance economic stability, the innovation process, and the combination of the two. A brief analysis of findings by country income group also appear in Appendix .
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Legal and regulatory compliance and access to contract enforcement comprise a key set of global challenges for micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). Transparent and predictable regulatory systems that create a rules-based “level playing field” are a near-universal goal of business environment reform a key foundation of economic stability. Yet small enterprises operated by poor and vulnerable people often lack the knowledge, skills, and time to register businesses, navigate regulatory systems, and access the justice system to enforce contracts, even when the overall business environment is improved. Innovators from the public sector are beginning to address these challenges with approaches to streamlining registration processes, commercial court access, and insolvency rules appropriate for small enterprises. Private entrepreneurs are also using technology to improve legal assistance, establish alternative contract enforcement and business dispute resolution systems, and create two-way MSME-focused information products that enable small entrepreneurs to make better choices about business operations, report corruption, improve interactions with government, and strengthen cross-border trade. e Government of Indonesia is also beginning to deploy alternative data sources to provide early warning of disruption in the business environment to improve macroeconomic management.
Back to Innovations by Chapter 4.1 Small Enterprises, Unlimited
Orodata (Nigeria) Many SME to improve public service delivery and the role and responsibilities owners in Nigeria are unaware of by making government at all levels of governments. In addition to their rights and the regulations more accountable, transparent, spurring innovation and reducing that govern their industry. The and efficient. By ‘democratizing’ public corruption, Orodata also civic technology startup Orodata open data and converting that provides citizens with detailed uses Software-as-a-Service into simple, interactive and static analysis on natural disasters, (SaaS) products and cloud-based visualization tools, which include hostile conflicts, and government solutions to simplify and make infographics, animations and interventions, as well as an accessible public data to enable videos, Orodata grants citizens education platform for training SME owners to make better easy access to information on how citizens on data collection and informed business decisions, and to start and operate a business, analysis methods. industry standards and regulations,
mSME Garage (Uganda) with free legal services to support increasing their ability to manage Uganda ranked as the most the development and sustainability legal challenges and generate entrepreneurial country in the of their businesses. Basic legal revenue. The mSME Garage is part world in 2015. However, the large services and business guidance are of BarefootLaw, which provides majority of the country’s small provided through an interactive legal support and guidance for businesses are informal, borne out online portal, social media, SMS, small businesses in Uganda, and of necessity, and destined to fail and WhatsApp messages, as well was a runner-up in the HiiL SME within the first year. mSME Garage as direct phone calls and on-the- Empowerment Innovation Challenge seeks to empower micro, small and ground consultations. This helps for East and West Africa for 2015. medium business owners in Uganda businesses to register and formalize,
Sauti (Kenya) to exercise their rights as citizens for SMEs. Sauti has been awarded Sauti Africa Limited is a mobile- of the EAC. Sauti provides SMEs a number of grants, including the based platform for simplifying with customized information on EAC-GIZ Incubator for Integration access to trade information and taxes and tariffs, updates on border and Development in East Africa, the promoting social accountability for procedures and other relevant HiiL SME Empowerment Innovation SMEs engaged in cross-border trade data. The platform also allows Challenge for East and West Africa, in the East African Community. traders to document incidences of and the D-Prize, which distributes Sauti, which means ‘voice’ in bribery and harassment in order to funds for poverty-alleviation Swahili, seeks to enable cross-border enhance evidence-based advocacy, interventions in the developing enterprises to conduct business transparency and accountability world. legally, safely and profitably, and of cross-border trade transactions
DIYLaw (Nigeria) Outdated to justice and professional and legal procedures more accessible, registration practices and myriad affordable legal services through its professional and transparent for other legal inefficiencies make one-stop online portal. The portal SMEs seeking to do business in Nigeria one of the most difficult allows entrepreneurs to register Nigeria. DIYLaw is a winner of countries in the world for doing their businesses and access legal the 2015 Hague Institute for the business. A legal technology startup documents and other resources, Innovation of Law (HiiL) SME called DIYLaw was recently founded and it also connects them to lawyers Empowerment Innovation Challenge by three women—two lawyers and for legal services. While not an for East and West Africa. one web developer—in Nigeria entirely original business model, to provide SMEs improved access DIYLaw is making registration and
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Commercial Courts Human Centered Business People and their experiences, rather for MSMEs (Liberia) Registration Improvement than bureaucratic processes, are As part of its broader efforts to (Indonesia) distinguishing features of new strengthen the country’s credit To support the Government of innovation methodologies. infrastructure, the government of Indonesia’s entrepreneurship Liberia, with assistance from the promotion initiatives, the UN’s Pulse PLJ found that the service World Bank Group and a number Lab Jakarta (PLJ) and the Australia experience is time consuming, of international development Indonesia Partnership for Economic opaque, and requires interaction agencies, in 2011 established the Governance (AIPEG) conducted with multiple government agencies, Commercial Court dedicated to an innovative experiment in 2016 leading many entrepreneurs to resolving critical debt access and to understand the experience of hire intermediaries (brokers or resolution disputes involving micro, entrepreneurs trying to register agents) to manage this complexity. small and medium enterprises businesses. “While previous studies Users complained about uncertain (MSMEs). e collaborations also led on business registration mostly timelines, while civil servants to the establishment of an electronic focused on the administrative parts reported that they often could not collateral registry that enables banks of the system, we wanted to focus meet citizens’ expectations for to securely lend to individuals and on the experience of entrepreneurs speedy registration and schedule small businesses that lack access to as they navigate the business certainty due to lack of familiarity traditional collateral such as land. registration process,” PLJ reports. with new systems. ey also found e registry is an online platform a steep learning curve-- user that allows borrowers to register Human-Centered Design—a experience was heavily influenced by their moveable assets as collateral— popular product and service how informed people are about the such as a motor vehicle, farm design methodology—starts process on both sides. equipment, crops, and accounts with developing an experiential receivable—in order to access lower- understanding of users’ tasks and e process ended with cost loans from commercial banks. feelings about a process before recommendations for new initiatives ese initiatives are being supported initiating a service re-design in to incentivize entrepreneurs to by a clutch of other recent legal order to uncover opportunities register their businesses, enable reforms aimed at promoting credit for improvement both small and entrepreneurs to get all information and investment, particularly for large. is “user journey” details they need to move smoothly MSMEs and rural-based agricultural the flow of experiences to which an through the registration process, enterprises. Since the registry was entrepreneur is typically subjected ensure that citizens can navigate deployed in 2014, almost 1,300 as she or he attempts to navigate the the process independently of the financial statements relating to business registration process. PLJ assistance of front-line staff, and $265 million in transactions have focused on both the entrepreneurs develop a training platform that been registered, with women-owned and the front-line civil servants keeps frontline staff motivated to enterprises accounting for more who interact throughout the stay up-to-date on new procedures. than 80% of active registrations. business registration process.
Back to Innovations by Chapter . Innovator Profile (BAPPENAS) in particular has seized the seized has inparticular (BAPPENAS) National of Development Planning Ministry economic Indonesia’s development. driven stimulated by moregovernment, data- amorebecoming proactive and anticipatory are atresponsiveness, aimed GOI efforts adequate government to maximize that conventional are no longer datasets Recognizing economic development efforts. to reshape its this potential and boost society, isproactively workingto unlock that istransforming commerce and pace revolution(GOI), keeping the data with Indonesia inclusive. of e Government issocially rapidthat growth the country’s to ensure designed strategy anti-poverty anambitious Asia—with in Southeast largest growing economies worldwide—the one the fastestIndonesia today of boasts economic into data big Integrating Indonesia of Government management economic to data create amore complete and to overlay conventional with these sources, emerging and other shipping, e-commerce, media, fromdata social ways with new toto harness experiment working alongside PLJ’s research team directorates have been from BAPPENAS Since the Lab’s inception in, that could derail inclusive development. economicproviding of shocks warnings early to aview with decisions, and policy strategy economic to informsignals the country’s data to test the feasibility digital using of innovation adata as inpart established lab (PLJ) was Jakarta Lab and GOI, Pulse the United Nations ajoint of initiative As responses to economicrapid volatility. policy for the need to data informrecognize better to the government within first institutions at the core mandate, was among its the of development with planning BAPPENAS, on track. inclusive growth the country’s keep and development monitor economic to data to near real-time use opportunity Innovation Regulation SME innovations: discover new TO WHERE have included: the recent of Some each projects of project. straightforward on the feasibility discussions and sets skill onbuilding complementary flow, exchange information and knowledge isapproachgoals. improved enabled has relatedanalysis to Indonesia’s development and completed substantive designed BAPPENAS within while domain experts capabilities, processing and analytical PLJ provided has theprojects, data collaborative of Inaseries performance. inclusive growth picture the country’s of • Analyzing global perceptions global the Analyzing of • understanding the Better relationship • and arrivals shipping Monitoring • using food Monitoring dynamics price • social networking platforms. networking social on information sharedbased publicly on and Indonesia’s destinations flagship brand Indonesia” tourism “Wonderful data. media social commodities using certain the increase of of sentiment inprices inflation ratesbetween and public patterns that impact Indonesian SMEs. system forwarning changes intrade domestic economy and anearly- as proxiesas for the conditions the of and e-commerce data departures poorer Indonesians. consumptionthat among destabilize can spikes price provide of warning early to and beef, commodities rice such as for priority especially Twitter data, . https://innovatingjustice.com/en/ Follow past winners at: challenges and current view across Africa. startups challengesjustice facing and legal SMEsand emerging promote and that effective solutions address disruptive the presented to Innovation the SMEEmpowerment Challenge, Justice Accelerator, the Ford of Foundation, support with has InstituteSince for e Hague , (HiiL) Innovation Law of trading patterns. trade regional intensity and regional inter- mapping questions better such as macroeconomicsto answer various research several e-commerce of include data the use for , proposalsproject from BAPPENAS abatchAmong collaborative new of from derailed being by shocks. reduction initiatives poverty SDG-aligned to data preventsame the Government’s ideas for new sparked prices the utilizing e-commerce toof data understand housing into solutions policy.data analysis Initial forpoint innovative of the incorporation big approaches are experimental ese astarting immediately. economic indicators was performed not or stresses, or other this to shocks events, to the actual analysis correlatedynamics, to process and show the the price data the team managed While the comparison. from any could gleaned whether be insights across data price housing provinces to see focused on investigating was initially data instance, e-commerce using the project iterations. openersas for For further to products, rather but finished be to act approaches, are projects these designed not new with inexperimenting customary As Back to Innovations by Chapter . Innovation Profile As a result, MOMA amended the Regulations . USAID Jordan Local on Buildings and Zoning for Cities and Enterprise Support Villages, which allows HBBs to now legally use residential areas for starting and Project (LENS) – registering their businesses. In August , USAID/FHI the SSC also issued HBBs an exemption from compulsory social security contributions. Integrating women’s home-based e regulatory changes allow the HBBs businesses into Jordan’s economy throughout the country to formalize more simply and efficiently, granting them legal Jordan ranks highly for gender equality status and resulting access to markets in human development indicators such and services. e project also trained as health and education. Yet women’s government and municipal agencies participation rates in the formal labor involved in the registration and licensing of force are among the lowest regionally. HBBs on the new legal framework, procured Unable to find employment in the formal a high-performance database server for the sector, many women in rural Jordan run Companies Control Department (CCD) to businesses informally from home. However, improve business registration efficiency, these home-based businesses (HBBs) have and partnered with the CCD and Ministry been hindered by zoning restrictions that of Industry, Trade and Supply to publish a effectively barred HBBs outside of the startup guide to help MSEs formalize Greater Amman Municipality from obtaining their businesses. business licenses. is forced informality limited their ability to access new markets LENS has also been assisting women in a and financial services, as well as substantially number of other ways, including Informal reducing Jordan’s tax base. Savings and Lending Groups manuals to Innovation Profile help facilitate women access to finance and e USAID Jordan Local Enterprise Support a Women’s Economic Empowerment grant Project (LENS), implemented by FHI , targeting women working in non-traditional began working in to strengthen the business sectors—plumbers electricians, legal status of woman-run HBBs outside and carpenters—with a focus on value- of Amman, particularly in underserved added services. communities. e goal was to empower women to grow their businesses and Female HBB owners working in food invest more in their local communities, production have been targeted as a key and to demonstrate a model to inform area of growth. USAID LENS has provided public sector decision-making. To this technical assistance to thousands of HBBs end, LENS conducted a survey of , to upgrade food safety standards, product businesses, finding that % of businesses development, production, packaging are informal and operate from home. To and transportation, linked HBBs to new the Ministry of Municipal Affairs (MOMA), markets through the online channels and LENS presented these results along with partnerships with industry groups. LENS comparative models of legally-recognized also signed an MOU with the supermarket home-based businesses from around the Safeway Jordan to integrate food producers world, a proposal for regularizing HBBs in and processors of pickled vegetables and Jordan, and, later, a study of the economic processed dairy products into its supply impact of such regulation. One issue LENS chains. rough these efforts, the project discovered in this process was that the aims to multiply job opportunities and high cost of compulsory social insurance promote innovation in these communities in would significantly erode HBB earnings a way that is inclusive of women, youth, and and discourage business registration. LENS other vulnerable populations. then presented these findings to the Social Security Corporation (SSC) and worked to obtain an exemption.
firms, , workers, and more than Contract billion in annual sales. Previous legal . Enforcement reforms reduced entry barriers for SMEs, which stimulated the creation of small for SMEs garment firms. However, the measures An initiative in Peru aims to improve also increased anonymity and weakened commercial dispute resolution for SMEs contract enforcement mechanisms, preventing individual firms from growing e ability to enforce contracts and resolve and specializing. Firms also faced increased disputes efficiently is essential for markets competition, reduced profits, underutilized to function properly and to make sustained capacity, and a lack of trust in contract economic development possible. Robust law and the institutions responsible for its contract enforcement mechanisms promote implementation. a sense of predictability and stability in commercial relationships by guaranteeing Most of Peru’s vast number of SMEs businesses and individuals that their emerged during the rural-to-urban migration contractual rights will be upheld impartially waves in the s and s, when soaring by local courts. is type of confidence, mineral prices fueled increasing internal which is necessary for small and medium demand and investment. But because the enterprises to succeed, is often absent in country’s governance and regulation capacity developing economies whose markets may did not develop concurrently, most SMEs be fragmented and lack formal regulation. were channeled to the informal sector, one of the largest in the world. Today, more than In countries like Peru, which has nine in ten businesses in Peru are micro, comprehensive laws to regulate the small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), about three quarters of which are informal. enforcement of commercial transactions, Innovation Profile inefficient, costly and corrupt courts can Peru’s MSMEs produce nearly half of impede the settlement of contractual national GDP and employ more than % of disputes, slowing down trade and the workforce. investment while also stymying innovation and entrepreneurship, making economies Peru is one of the fastest growing economies less efficient. in Latin America. As part of its effort to sustain that momentum, the government To address this need for an effective contract is taking steps to expand market access enforcement mechanism in Peru, the state- for MSMEs by developing measures to owned development bank Corporación strengthen contractual enforcement Financiera de Desarrollo (COFIDE) and the mechanisms and build public trust in the non-profit Innovations for Poverty Action country’s legal and judiciary systems. A (IPA) partnered in to pilot and evaluate stronger legal environment would increase an online contract enforcement platform access to credit and boost productivity mechanism for SMEs. e platform builds on and spur innovation. e pilot is ongoing, an existing SME services portal and adds a but if successful, the mechanism could user-driven ratings and penalty mechanism, be applied in SME markets in other and employs a randomized evaluation to emerging economies to promote financial assess its impact. inclusion and economic stability for smaller businesses. e contract enforcement mechanism is being tested in Lima’s historic Gamarra district, home to Latin America’s largest garment cluster, comprising ,
Back to Innovations by Chapter Stabilizing Jobs & Gigs
The Atlas of Innovation for Economic Stability e much-heralded “Fourth Industrial Revolution” promises a new wave of automation that will profoundly disrupt formal employment worldwide. In this context, the nature of work in upper-middle- and high-income economies is becoming less stable due to the long-term trend of casualization or non-standard work arrangements, and the more recent rise of the “platform economy.” In lower-income contexts, own-account work has always accounted for a larger share of employment, and new platforms can reduce the friction of finding this work, but technology and management trends cast doubt on future prospects for stable, decent work as we know it. Despite emphasis in the Sustainable Development Goals, globally, the outlines of a new “social contract” around work have not yet emerged in practice, and existing labor protection systems may come under additional stress as formal- sector jobs evolve and platform and other forms of “non-standard work” expand. is section highlights some new tools that are emerging in this very dynamic and uncertain environment to provide greater stability to workers. Innovators are using better labor market data, new options for online training, and new business models for non-traditional retirement savings and benefits for employees and the self-employed alike to create more stable employment situations, inform investment in skills, smooth income, and retain workers. Others are connecting vulnerable refugee populations to jobs and gigs. Numerous technology-enabled multi-stakeholder partnerships are also emerging, using crowd- generated information to complement or supplement traditional workplace regulation.
Back to Innovations by Chapter . Stabilizing Jobs & Gigs
Strategic Partnerships for Burning Glass (USA) Garment Supply Chain American analytics software Transformation (several) company Burning Glass e Strategic Partnership Technologies offers a range of labor for Garment Supply Chain MicroBenefits (China) market analytics solutions that Transformation 2016-2020 CompanyIQ by MicroBenefits generate the most detailed and up- is an initiative of the Fair China is a proprietary mobile-based to-date insight into the workforce Wear Foundation (FWF), CNV application that provides factory and marketplace to match people Internationaal and Mondiaal workers in China, Vietnam and with jobs. Powered by its patented FNV, with support from the Mexico access to a range of services artificial intelligence technology Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including gamified skill-building and the world’s largest database of designed to improve corporate and career advancement training jobs and skills, Burning Glass uses and government policies related to programs that are fun and which bots that track millions of online job human rights compliance in garment aim to promote upward economic postings every day from more than supply chains. e Partnership mobility. Additionally, CompanyIQ 40,000 sources. e company uses is developing evidence-based hosts an interactive social media a proprietary database language, examples drawn from the expertise platform that provides peer-to- or taxonomy, that analyzes this of labor unions, governments, peer messaging as well as direct and other data to identify the NGOs and participating brands communication between contract specific skills and qualifications that and factories to demonstrate how factory workers and management. employers in different sectors and fair wages, gender equality and It also provides a company news locations are seeking. Burning Glass healthy worker-employer relations feed that delivers information also tracks and forecasts disruptive can benefit all parties. By creating on factory policies, timecard logs changes in the job market, allowing real-world examples of human rights and payroll, in order to enhance workers to make the most informed compliance and improved working transparency and workers’ and evidence-based decisions for conditions from actual apparel confidence in their earnings. their career. Both faster and more supply chains, the Partnership Increasing employee engagement precise than traditional survey- aims to provide replicable solutions and satisfaction also creates based labor market information, across the rest of the industry. value for factory management by Burning Glass delivers real-time Participating European garment improving productivity and reducing data and innovative planning tools brands support improvements at costly worker turnover rates that empower employers, educators the factory-floor level by adapting and the organizational expenses and workers to see what the job the way they do business with associated with processing employee market looks like today and what it their suppliers, paving the way for complaints. CompanyIQ is being will look like in the future. Burning meaningful and sustainable change. used by a number of multinationals Glass solutions are used by the U.S. Projects are being developed in eight including Nike, Gap and Jabil. Federal Reserve, state and local garment-producing countries in e app will be made available government agencies, and hundreds Asia (Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, for workers in Indonesia and the of leading corporate and academic Indonesia, Myanmar, Pakistan and Philippines in 2018. customers. Vietnam) and Africa (Ethiopia).
MobiVi (Vietnam, Laos, Pension Match (Peru) Alia (USA) Cambodia, Indonesia) The Universidad del Pacífico, Developed by the National Domestic MobiVi is an electronic commerce University of Maryland and Workers Alliance (NDWA), through and transaction processing platform Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), its Fair Care Labs innovation created by the Vietnam-based iCare in collaboration with the Pension hub, the technology platform Alia Benefits to give low- and medium- Fund Administrators Association collects small, regular payments income factory workers access to (AAFP) of Peru is piloting a project from multiple employers to help essential products and services. and evaluation in Lima at firms independent domestic workers in Most factory workers in Vietnam do with 10 or fewer workers who are the United States access and afford not have a credit card or access to not enrolled in the contributory benefits. The funds are applied formal financial services. Through pension system. Its purpose is toward sick leave, disability, accident iCare’s zero-interest installment to test the impact of a pension and other life-enhancing insurance plan, they can purchase mobile match scheme (financed by IPA) on protections that Fair Care Labs phones and household appliances, enrollment and contributions to hopes will raise the standard and vaccinations and other healthcare pensions among informal workers quality of work for thousands of services, and send their children to of small firms. This offers a good domestic employees. Alia helps school while reducing their reliance opportunity to generate evidence domestic workers to increase control on informal lenders and other that will inform the government over their work schedules and wages usurious lending mechanisms. iCare how to design such a program. and to manage financially when is improving the lives of some 2.5 The transfers, conditional on the they fall ill. This not only promotes million workers at the bottom of worker’s personal contributions, aim a healthier, more productive the economic pyramid in Vietnam, to incentivize pension savings for workforce, but also helps cleaners Laos, Cambodia and Indonesia, workers and reduce future costs for and care workers to better navigate helping them save time and money. government by enabling individuals the changing nature of domestic Companies also gain: iCare is to provide for their own needs in labor. In 2017, NDWA received improving workplace productivity old age. The research will assess additional funding to help scale up and reducing worker turnover by whether matching interventions for Alia, from Google’s philanthropic incentivizing its benefits; the longer workers in developing countries can arm Google.org as part of its broader a worker stays with one company, effectively increase their pension Future of Work initiative. the more products and services they coverage and their savings for Innovator profiled on p. 40 have access to as an iCare member. retirement.
Golden Dreams (SE Asia) home and destination countries. migrants from the risks of working Developed in 2017 by the Bangkok- Golden Dreams also delivers news abroad. Golden Dreams is a free based Issara Institute, with support updates on rights and laws related app and available to job seekers, from USAID and the Walmart to migrant workers as well as news current workers, and their families Foundation, Golden Dreams is a from Myanmar, provides a 24-hour and communities. It also supports Burmese-language smartphone hotline to register complaints or Issara’s partnership program with application that enables current seek assistance from the Issara global brands and retailers by and prospective migrant workers to team, and features other review, allowing worker voices and feedback share information about employers, rating and polling functions to be heard by business and to drive recruiters and service providers, designed to empower job seekers better business practices and more such as hospitals and NGOs, in both and help protect millions of Burmese ethical supply chains.
RefugeesWork (Austria) and overcome the disadvantages financial benefits through the RefugeesWork is an online platform they face when finding work. It also receipt of government subsidies and developed by Austrian entrepreneur allows employers to navigate the increased productivity by allowing Dominik Beron that connects job- complex legal environment, providing employers to hire from a larger seeking refugees from conflict-torn them with information on policies and more diverse pool of talent. countries with businesses in Austria and subsidies that relate to hiring Currently, more than 275 companies that are hiring. The platform uses a refugees. By bringing refugees into and 5,400 refugees are registered jobs matching algorithm and face-to- the labor market, RefugeesWork on the RefugeesWork platform. The face training to provide refugees who promotes social integration and company is in the process of licensing have the qualifications and required economic stability. For businesses, its platform to organizations in other experience to obtain employment employing refugees can bring countries (e.g. France).
Back to Innovations by Chapter 39 and households, remains informal and is . not highly regarded by the general public. Moreover, a growing number of the families that employ domestic workers face their own economic pressures, unable to make a living wage. For them, contributing an extra few dollars to their cleaners’ benefit fund is out of the question. “It’s an uphill battle around even viewing this work, just like any other job that deserves rights and protections and benefits, as real work.” As growing numbers of Americans are forced to work in the informal sector or in the gig economy, the national discussion around ‘portable benefits’—benefits provided Alia - Palak Shah outside of the traditional employment arrangement that workers can take with Co-founder them from job to job—is gaining in Domestic work is among the fastest growing importance. “Now others are experiencing jobs in the United States, yet cleaners, what’s it’s always been like for domestic caregivers and nannies are still close to the workers in this country,” Palak says. bottom of the income scale and remain Immigrants, primarily from Spanish- among the most vulnerable and exploited speaking countries south of the U.S. border, Innovator Profile Innovator workers in the country. Domestic workers, make up a disproportionate number of who are overwhelmingly female, now domestic workers. Pressures brought by comprise what Palak Shah calls “an ignored recent immigration reforms leaves them and forgotten workforce.” even more susceptible to exploitation and Palak is the director of the National abuse by their employers, including human Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA), the trafficking, confiscated passports, and leading voice for domestic workers in the substandard wages. “ ese people are really country, and is also the social innovations living on the edges of the economy,” Palak director of NDWA’s recently founded says. “ ey are really scared and they need innovation hub, Fair Care Labs, where work, but the more they are affected by she, along with social entrepreneur Sam immigration status, they more vulnerable Witherbee, created Alia, a tech-driven they are.” platform to provide benefits and lift Google’s philanthropic arm is supporting standards for domestic workers (profiled Fair Care Labs to build-out Alia and to on p. ). Alia collects payments of per embed Google Translate into the platform, cleaning from employers and aggregates to enable Spanish-speaking domestic these micro-contributions into a scheme to workers to communicate more effectively provide cleaners with a menu of benefits or about daily work requirements as well insurance products or to have the money as contracts, job descriptions and other applied to pay for sick days. agreements. Numerous other agencies are Segments of the domestic workforce are partnering with Fair Care Labs to develop growing at five times the rate of the national new products and expand its existing ones job growth, with childcare and homecare jobs for the labor force. expected to be the single largest occupation “ ese are the only jobs that are growing, so in the country by , Palak explains. we have to figure out how to make these jobs But caring for the elderly and children good jobs,” Palak says, “which makes this a and cleaning the home, however intimate very worthy thing to get involved in.” and vital to the functioning of families
Innovation of Work Future innovations: discover new TO WHERE Passport Skill employment recorda permanent the called ispioneering Learning Viridis called startup To aneducation tech thisdivide, helpbridge employers. arethey to unable the right connect with because also but skills suitable the lack of unemployed or underemployed, only for not workers millionsgo of unfilled, remain numerous jobpostings challenge. As equal an been degree—has year post-secondary education and school less afour- than high that market—jobs requireskill more a than growing demand for inthe middle- labor the Meeting talent theirbusinesses. to drive homegrown to find enough struggling firms leavesend industries factories and tech America’s yawning higher- gap inits skills learners connect to data big Using Learning Viridis needs areneeds helping on students decide post-graduation about data employment Viridis for solutions driven and users firms. providing thus data- end-to-end hiring, employers local with populations whoare veterans, underserved and other military connects community college graduates,It Passport™. Universal Skill proprietary its information market systems via and labor tracking applicant databases, government student existing informationwith systems, platform integrates technology SaaS based, for Viridis’s candidates. qualified cloud- by matching companies them with looking career pathways for middle-level workers with mid-skill jobs jobs mid-skill with TM that enables new customized customized that new enables http://www.mitinclusiveinnovation.com. Follow past winners at: challenges and current view economy.digital for workers and promote inthe rapidly evolving theirparticipation economic to opportunity drive entrepreneursglobal technology using Economy on the which Initiative Digital awardsMIT funding to the of initiative e Inclusive isthe Innovation flagship Challenge Its offices areIts inPalo and Austin, TX. Alto,CA Gates and Melinda eas Bill Foundation. FoundationLumina funders and other such from Salesforce Ventures, ayer Ventures, in venture investments through capital To raised has million some Viridis date, age. the digital more in employers expected the ease with workforce—by connecting more students to century-ready the development ast of integrated and ecosystems, leading campus gap via skills the global closing middle class, the economic the expanding of mobility helping the company to of vision its fulfill platform its now internationally, scaling community is colleges in. Viridis with before partnerships its launched it whom wereof formerly incarcerated, education, many low or no secondary with ,people about with mode beta Founded in launched in,Viridis and telecommunicationschains, firms. companies, manufacturers, restaurant includes healthcare providers, technology and by anationwide employer network that Hawaii,California, New York and Texas, in more mostly than college campuses, on platform isnow used Cloud e Viridis and retention costs. recruitment more whilecutting efficiently information allowsemployers also to hire e forlearners real opportunities. collegesto prepareand two-year enabling demand,careers market with that align Back to Innovations by Chapter . Innovation Profile . Improving worker welfare and corporate compliance through tech-enabled solutions Contemporary global supply chains are complex and fragmented, with the potential for worker exploitation at numerous points, from unpaid overtime to human trafficking and modernday slavery. Companies are also under intensifying public and legal pressure to ensure that their supply chains are free of forced labor and human trafficking. Laborlink and Labor Solutions by Workplace Options are two mobile-based platforms designed to assess working conditions and enable employees to communicate through peer-to-peer networks and other digital tools while giving international brands and retailers better visibility into their supply chains, which allows them to make more socially responsible sourcing and business decisions.
Since its founding in , Laborlink has Laborlink surveyed more than one million workers Mobile-enabled workplace monitoring across countries, collecting some . and employee engagement million data points to enhance visibility into supply chains, pinpoint high-risk issues, Millions of low-wage garment workers and enhance two-way worker-management endure harsh working conditions and communication. Previously housed substandard wages only to suffer in silence within non-profit Good World Solutions, because they are afraid or unable to convey Laborlink is now part of ELEVATE, a global their concerns outside the workplace. By professional services firm that specializes deploying locally-appropriate mobile- in supply chain social, environmental based technology, namely Interactive Voice and business performance. Together with
Innovation Profile Response (IVR) or WeChat, Laborlink ELEVATE, Laborlink aims to incorporate translates the voices of marginalized worker engagement tools into the social workers into actionable analytics to improve audit paradigm and to scale worker voice their well-being within the workplace. technology to reach millions more workers. Laborlink also enables international brands and retailers to protect their reputations, Laborlink data have been used to reduce and their bottom lines, by allowing them sexual harassment in India, disclose child to monitor the work environment on labor violations in China, report dangerous the factory floors where their goods are work conditions in Bangladesh, empowering produced. companies with the ability to get reliable data on working conditions in their own and With a few strokes of their touch-tone their sub-contractors' factories. keypad, workers call a phone number given to them (Laborlink calls them back, so In addition to worker grievances, worker workers aren’t charged for the call) and satisfaction and employee turnover remain answer short multiple-choice surveys that a chief corporate concern, especially in cover their health, safety, wage, and even China, which has one of the world’s lowest potential forced labor conditions. e rates of employee engagement. In , process is designed so that workers can Laborlink introduced a two-year pilot project anonymously report through a secure user in factories in China to understand why interface privately and on their own time, workers leave and what would make them without managers listening in, allowing stay. It provided brands and retailers a Laborlink to gather sensitive information benchmarking opportunity to track industry that might otherwise go unheard. It also trends and compare their factories against delivers training and educational content their peers, serving as a powerful motivator about workers’ rights and local services via to improve worker satisfaction, reduce SMS or voice recording messages. turnover, boost their competitiveness, and prove to their buyers that that they value their workers.
Workplace Options complaints that bypasses the factory owners and reaches the brand-name corporations . A digital suite enabling communication whose products they manufacture. A and compliance for employee wellbeing number of multinational brands have made WPOConnect a requirement, with one major Workplace Options, headquartered in manufacturer obliging all of their contract Raleigh, North Carolina, is the world’s factories to adopt WPOConnect into their largest employee wellness and support workplaces by . program provider. It serves million employees in over , organizations Messages received by WPOConnect’s online around the world. It offers an array dashboard are sorted, analyzed, responded of integrated workforce management to, and stored. With more data at hand, services for companies, including employee brands and factories can access in real- assistance programs, wellness coaching, time the number and nature of messages customized training and counselling about any topic. Data from the factories services, to help people to overcome their are reported up to the brand, giving them work-related stress and maximize workplace a bird’s-eye view of what goes on in their effectiveness. factories, and assurance that their workers are being treated fairly. is information A suite of technology products designed by allows the brands to make better business Workplace Options to empower the evolving decisions and, ultimately, improve their workforce - Labor Solutions - allows workers bottom line while avoiding compliance and companies in any part of the world risks. WPOConnect also helps management to communicate / through traditional retain workers. Elena Fanjul-Debnam, the phones, text messages, or mobile application company’s Vice President of Labor Solutions, services to report and help resolve problems says that WPOConnect has allowed WPO Innovation Profile related to compliance, productivity, clients to reduce employee turnover by absenteeism, and other workplace matters. % following long holidays, when late- Its Micro-Coaching program uses SMS returning workers are particularly prone to and app-enabled interactions as well as quit their jobs. e program has also enabled individualized support to help workers employers to get ahead of problems before manage their physical, emotional and they occur: WPOConnect-facilitated dialogue practical wellbeing, through its international between labor and management, according network of qualified providers and to Fanjul-Debham, has prevented a number professionals. Another program, called of strikes and shortened others. WPOConnect, provides companies with a web-based dashboard that can send and WPOConnect also includes a remote SMS receive text messages from the factory floor and app-based survey function as an to field workers to office personnel anywhere alternative to traditional workplace audits, in the world. e ubiquity and efficacy of which are expensive and often fail to capture text messages vis-à-vis other forms of mass worker voice. is allows factories and communication has enabled WPOConnect to brands to survey a more diverse selection expand quickly and efficiently. of workers. If a brand sees something it doesn’t like, it can drill down to respond and Low-wage factory workers in Indonesia more effectively manage grievances at the are using WPOConnect to receive safety factory level. training, pregnancy and dietary advice and other wellbeing-related information. ey With its goal to reduce employee stress and also are using it to track the compliance of make them more productive in their jobs, contract factory owners on a range of issues Workplace Options services are helping to including overtime pay, working conditions, more directly include workers’ voices and and sexual harassment by providing the build stronger alliances between global workers a way to submit anonymous workers and global brands.
Back to Innovations by Chapter $ $
$ $
Consumption Floors & Nets
The Atlas of Innovation for Economic Stability $ mBANKING
While many high-income countries retain strong rights-based welfare benefit systems, middle-income countries often lack the fiscal space for universal entitlements. eir employment structures tend to exclude the neediest who do not qualify for job-based social insurance. Conditional and unconditional cash transfers have been areas of substantial innovation in the past two decades in these contexts, along with ambitious guaranteed work arrangements. ese programs provide direct cash assistance to people living in poverty, introducing short-term income and consumption stability in ways that have been positively evaluated to have beneficial longer-term effects on economic status. Owing to rapid changes in developed-country labor markets and anticipated future destabilization from automation, a less mature offshoot is innovation in proposals for a universal basic income, intended to provide a consumption floor in a coming era of human employee reduction particularly in routine jobs most often held by less-skilled workers.
Back to Innovations by Chapter 6.1 Consumption Floors & Nets
JOB $ $
Prospera (Mexico) Productive Safety Net (Ethiopia) Gandhi Rural Prospera, previously known as The Productive Safety Net Employment Act (India) Oportunidades, is a conditional Programme (PSNP) in Ethiopia is The Mahatma Gandhi National cash transfer program that benefits an initiative of the Government Rural Employment Guarantee Act more than 30 million Mexicans of Ethiopia, World Food Program was initiated by the Government in poverty, almost a quarter of (WFP) and development partners of India in 2005 to reduce rural the entire population. Every two to help chronically food insecure poverty by guaranteeing 100 months, Prospera gives small sums households increase their long-term days of paid employment per year of money to families under the resilience to food shortages. Eligible (increased to 150 days in 2015) condition that their children attend beneficiaries receive monthly cash or to rural households whose adult school and receive vaccinations and food transfers for 5-6 months a year, members volunteer for unskilled regular medical checkups. Prospera’s typically during the lean season. manual labor at the statutory success over the past two decades This support smooths consumption, minimum wage. The Act provides a in improving school enrollment and enabling households to meet their social safety net for up to 50 million education levels, health prevention basic food requirements without households of underemployed and and nutritional status, and reducing having to sell productive assets and mostly impoverished agricultural income poverty in rural areas has to plan with greater confidence. workers. The basic income improves made it one of the most replicated For households with able-bodied their purchasing power while the anti-poverty programs in the world. adults, the transfers are contingent work creates common property For this reason, UNICEF Mexico upon engagement in labor- assets, such as rural roads and piloted Prospera Digital in 2015 to intensive public works projects water management works. It also use mobile technologies to promote that contribute to more resilient helps men and women find jobs digital and financial inclusion livelihoods for communities, such close to home, thereby reducing of Prospera’s beneficiaries. Its as rehabilitating natural resources out-migration to the cities. Comprehensive Financial Inclusion and developing local infrastructure. Additional benefits include the (CFI) program provides a range The PNSP is contributing to incorporation of the rural poor of services including financial improved food security and into the formal banking system, education, savings programs, and agricultural productivity, increased stabilized agricultural production access to micro-credit and insurance. asset creation, and greater access and enhanced gender equality. The data-driven tools help the to education and health services. However, the Act is implemented in government to reduce costs by The latest phase of the program, a decentralized manner and not all delivering cash transfers simply supported by the European wages disbursed by the government through smartphones, and enable Development Fund, is designed reach their intended recipients; beneficiaries, particularly women, to increase resilience to shocks, some economists and civil society to reduce risk by allowing them to improve food and nutrition security advocates complain that leakages receive their transfers more safely and enhance environmental and corrupt implementation have and conveniently. management. rendered the Act ineffective.
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13th Month Pay (Colombia, Chile, Argentina, Mexico) The 13th Month Pay is a government-mandated additional month of pay required to be paid by employers to help workers meet the financial demands that typically occur around the end- $ of-year holiday season. It reduces workers’ dependence on credit and other potentially predatory lending mechanisms and provides a stabilizing effect on consumption. The 13th Month Pay is mandatory ProSoli (Dominican Republic) PKH (Indonesia) in a number of countries, primarily Progresando con Solidaridad, The Government of Indonesia’s in Latin America, and voluntary in or ProSoli, is a government-to- conditional cash transfer program, several others. It can be paid in a person conditional cash transfer Program Keluarga Harapan (PKH lump sum at the end of the year or in (CCT) program in the Dominican or Family Hope Program), provides installments. Republic. Eligible beneficiaries the country’s poorest households receive digitized transfers directly with cash, contingent upon Universal Basic Income (Finland) into accounts which are tied to debit their participation in health and Finland is currently conducting a cards that can be used to purchase education services. Beneficiaries pilot experiment of universal basic food, gas, power, and other goods are restricted to households with income, a form of social security from authorized vendors. Many pregnant or lactating women, or that pays all citizens a regular sum of their benefits are subject to those with young children. PKH of money irrespective of their conditions, such as sending their is implemented by the Ministry financial situation. A group of children to school and for regular of Social Affairs and has delivered 2,000 Finnish adults were randomly medical checkups. Beneficiaries the highest impact per dollar selected in December 2016 to be also meet regularly in larger groups spent among the country’s social paid a basic monthly income (€650) and receive monthly home visits assistance programs in terms of for a two-year period. The idea is from ProSoli community workers reducing poverty and inequality. that the income allows recipients who assist the families in accessing The transfers are enabling families to spend less time seeking financial public services, and who provide to send their children to school and support and more time working information about general health spend more on health and nutrition or looking for work. Implemented and wellness. Beneficiaries also services, which has contributed by Kela, Finland’s Social Insurance have access to a wide variety to a substantial reduction in child Institution, the purpose of the of technical and vocational stunting and malnutrition. In May experiment is to better understand training opportunities. ProSoli 2017, the World Bank approved how the social security system has and continues to experiment $200 million in financing to expand could be redesigned to address with interventions to provide the PKH program to reach 10 the changing nature of work, and beneficiaries with improved financial million households, to help the whether the bureaucracy could be literacy, access to savings accounts, government achieve its accelerated streamlined and simplified to give and access to commercial credit at poverty reduction targets and people a stronger incentive to favorable rates for micro-enterprises. improve the future of children from find jobs. poor families.
Back to Innovations by Chapter 47 . World Social Science Report . Challenging Inequalities: Pathways Challenging . World to Science World. Report aJust Social Paris: Publishing. -. pp. UNESCO UNICEF and World . Bank American Institutes for American Research. https://www.air.org/project/impact-evaluation-zambia-s-child-grant-program. (Eds) IDS and UNESCO InISSC, . World the intersecting inequalities. challenge of no Science one Report ‘Leaving behind’: Nalia. Social Kabeer, Lister, .Poverty. Ruth. Polity Cambridge: Press. UNICEF. Protection Integrated for Systems: . Equity Social Enhancing https://www.unicef.org/socialprotection/framework/. Children. Innovator Profile comprehensive responses. the provision coordinated of andsupports playcan inrealizing children’s and rights approach to the role protection that social pragmatic UNICEF takes afundamentally UNICEF’s of is at the heart approach. forms poverty and other of social economic, holistic approach that could address these and adopting a manifestations poverty of of theiridentities. of children a result as and families experience and exclusion that the discrimination with vulnerability are alltoo often intertwined daughter. However, and economic poverty a of in labor, to to marriage agree anearly toschool, allow theirchild to participate choices:unthinkable to remove achild from economic away shock from making and dignity. families ese may one be robbing opportunity, them of resilience families toincome, poverty, driving and to may economic shocks lead to lossin economic and vulnerability of stability Lack as adults. as likelytwice as poverty inextreme to living be children are and they years below age, of line day) are (. per poverty international the of the below living million people reach half Almost her or potential. hisfull protected, be andschool, grow to thrive up the first month life, of go to survive will achild inwhether often determinant akey innovation e economic welfare families of isalltoo integrating is UNICEF How UNICEF services. access to healthcare and child protection or lack of deprivation nutritional such as life of aspects inmanyitself non-monetary economic vulnerability and manifests into its social protection mission protection social its into erefore, understanding various
Poverty beyond extends Protection Framework) the four components UNICEF’s of Social Two transfers cash decades ago, (one of transfer itself. expenditure by anamount greater the than productive and ultimately increase total their toCGP allowed households become more inducethan dependency, feared, some as the and invested inproductive Rather activities. necessities for children, reduced theirdebt, more bought livestock, conditions, bought secure, families improved also theirhousing to eating more more mealsand being food under five years old, found that inaddition children with directly to households poor Programme (CGP),which provided grants Grant Child government-funded Zambian impact evaluation the of supported AUNICEF- inAfrica. mainly countries, transfer cash of programs inmany andrigorous systematic impact evaluations and experience by UNICEF’s in-country was anchored and amplified Learning countries. by in UNICEF programs were supported transfers cash , of As contexts. developmentin both and humanitarian practice applied is awidely UNICEF within innovation to mainstream, where today it strategies inevolvingtransfers cash from exchange knowledge havesouth key been evidence and cultivating south- sharing experiences, Documenting component. and innovative protectionnew social of eligible children. ey also learned how children. learned also eligible ey of children, to targeting better contributing understand the many faced deprivations by study there to help UNICEF gained insights under years From age. of achild poverty reaching two thirds about allchildren of transfer cash largest schemeinAfrica, Grant isthe Africa’s South Support Child
were arelatively microsimulation and costing techniques from cash in envelopes to a mobile money could improve the program design. transfer. is is more secure, easy to access, . less time consuming and a more dignified Experiences like these evolved the discourse way of making payments to beneficiaries, from ‘Should we do it?’ to ‘How we can do it who are able to access cash, transfer money better and in more places?’ UNICEF distilled to others, make payments and access them a cycle of work and phased activities and from many locations across the country. tools to support the introduction, expansion and improvement of cash transfer programs. In Nepal, UNICEF uses the mobile-solutions platform RapidPro to enhance real-time is pathway to scale was accelerated program monitoring and accountability of with the crafting of a Social Protection the government’s Child Grant Program, Framework in which included cash one of five social cash transfers for the transfers, and the methodical embedding most vulnerable. Households enrolled of these components into the UNICEF DNA in the program are polled about the within the Strategic Plan - and implementation and delivery of the grants, into the organization’s current Strategic Plan allowing feedback from those in remote -. areas to inform and improve national policy Opportunities to improve continue to and implementation at the local level. emerge. e high penetration of mobile For UNICEF, it is clear that access to social phones paired with financial technology security is a human right and a child right. offer new possibilities—and fintech use is Cash transfers can directly address monetary rising dramatically (global adoption rates child poverty and vulnerability, serve as a were % in , predicted to soon reach
safety net to protect families from shocks, Profile Innovator %)—with high demand seen in markets and can address financial barriers to basic like China, India, South Africa and Mexico. social services, such as education and health, UNICEF country offices are exploring various thereby reducing multidimensional child digital mechanisms to deliver cash transfers poverty. Cash transfers can also address as well as to identify beneficiaries, gather the financial drivers of child protection their feedback, and encourage targeted outcomes and can impact the inter- savings such as for educational payments. generational cycle of poverty and inequity In Iraq in , UNICEF started a cash for through accumulation of human capital. education initiative to remove financial UNICEF's perspective is that the overall barriers to schooling for displaced children impacts of a cash transfer program sums to of families living in informal settlements. a value that is greater than the transfer size. Within a year, distribution had evolved
DSD, SASSA & UNICEF. . ‘Removing barriers to accessing Child Grants: Progress in reducing exclusion from South Africa’s Child Support Grant.’ Pretoria: UNICEF South Africa. https://www.unicef.org/strategicplan/files/--UNICEF_Strategic_Plan-ODS-English.pdf. EY FinTech Adoption Index . http://www.ey.com/gl/en/industries/financial-services/ey-fintech-adoption-index.
e Cash Innovation Challenge was organized by a partnership of WHERE TO international NGOs to create a space for the private sector and discover new humanitarian agencies to identify and conceptualize innovative innovations: solutions to challenges affecting humanitarian cash transfer Cash programming. Find details on the challenge at: https://www. Transfer eventbrite.com/e/cash-innovation-challenge-open-data-management- Innovations for-humanitarian-cash-tickets-#.
Back toThe Innovations Atlas of Innovation by Chapter for Economic Stability $ Inclusive Financialization
The Atlas of Innovation for Economic Stability $
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Until recently, the mega-trend of financialization of the economy primarily benefited financial institutions, shareholders, and developed-world consumers. Two trends—fintech that relies on mobile technology and big data, and financial inclusion, the logical extension of the maturity and mainstreaming of microfinance—are converging to offer more inclusive financial products that help manage cash flows and risks for customers who only a few years ago could not be reached with these services, or about whose existence and financial habits too little was known to extend profitable lending and insurance products. This means that for the first time, financial actors are developing products to spread financial risk that is traditionally borne entirely by the poor, and in some cases helping them accumulate productive assets as the centerpiece of agricultural businesses. Innovations range from income management and automated savings globally to agricultural and livestock insurance in sub-Saharan Africa and Nepal, and a number of digital payment system. Products span the lowest- to highest-income contexts, though fewer have emerged in the lowest-income economies due to lower mobile phone penetration, smaller market sizes, and nascent data infrastructure. This is changing fast as mobile networks penetrate further into the developing world.
Back to Innovations by Chapter 51 . Inclusive Financialization
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Hello Tractor (Nigeria, Africa) Hello Tractor is a tractor-sharing Risk-Contingent Credit mobile platform developed by (Kenya, India, South Asia, Wave Money (Myanmar) American entrepreneur Jehiel Africa) Wave Money is a joint venture Oliver with start-up funding e risk-contingent credit between Telenor, Yoma from private investors and a (RCC) program is a market- Bank, and Myanmar First grant from USAID, as well as based innovative insurance Investments (FMI) that provides loan guarantees from the Central solution launched in 2016 by a convenient, fast and secure way Bank of Nigeria. HelloTractor the International Food Policy for Myanmar citizens to send enables individuals in Nigeria Research Institute (IFPRI), and receive money anywhere and elsewhere in Africa to access under the Global Resilience at any time. rough its agent low-cost financing to purchase Partnership. RCC seeks to network of 15,000 Wave Shops small tractors equipped with mitigate drought-related nationwide or a mobile phone GPS tracking software, and production risks and provide account, Wave Money provides then rent them out to other previously uninsured farmers a platform for banks and smallholder farmers for a modest access to credit. It is a social microfinance institutions to offer fee. HelloTractor provides safety net in the form of an services to those underserved by owners with additional income insurance-linked financial the country’s fledgling financial from the rental payments they product which automatically infrastructure, giving millions collect, and farmers who rent the offsets loan payments that are of people access to formal tractor with on-demand, low- due to lenders when triggered financial services, many for the cost access to machinery. is by such risks as natural disasters first time. In early 2017, Wave dramatically cuts labor time and and drops in crop yields and Money signed an agreement costs without requiring farmers prices. RCC uses a satellite- with the United Nations Capital to have the capital to purchase a derived drought index to capture Development Fund (UNCDF), tractor themselves. e machines underlying risks, integrating key supported by the Australian are specifically designed to be environmental variables—e.g. Government’s DFAT, to develop smaller and lightweight in order rainfall, vegetation and soil digital financial literacy tools to to better navigate the types moisture—via state-of-the-art accelerate financial inclusion and sizes of plots owned by remote sensors. in Myanmar. smallholder farmers.
Modelo Peru (Peru) Modelo Perú is a unique collaboration of more than 30 of Peru’s financial institutions, telecom companies, government and others to establish a fully MyWORTH (Tanzania) interoperable national digital MyWORTH is an Android and payments platform designed tablet app being piloted in to promote financial inclusion. Tanzania with Pact’s micro- e platform, known as banking program WORTH. BiM (Billetera Móvil) allows It works as a mobile e-ledger, Peruvian citizens to register MyAgro (Mali) replacing paper-based savings and open an electronic money Many small-scale farmers in records and giving previously account directly on their Mali live too far from formal financially excluded women phones, including via SMS on banking institutions to make real-time access to group loans non-smartphones most often saving money feasible, while through the convenience of a cell used by underserved customer important inputs are typically phone. WORTH brings together segments, and soon at any of sold in bulk, requiring farmers women in groups of 20-25 to the more than 100,000 physical to purchase them in a single receive financial literacy and nationwide sales points. Its payment. myAgro addresses numeracy training, learn how purpose is to provide digital both of those challenges by using to access credit and run a small financial services to populations a prepaid scratch card model— business, and function as their who previously may not have similar to buying prepaid mobile own micro-banks by pooling had access to any financial minutes—that allows farmers savings deposits for members to services. BiM’s mobile wallets to purchase seed, fertilizer take out loans when they need make use of existing financial and even specialized trainings them. Developed by Pact with infrastructure to facilitate easy incrementally on layaway support from Hewlett-Packard deposits and withdrawals and through a mobile-based platform Enterprise’s Living Progress enable individuals to transfer and a network of vendor Challenge, MyWORTH enables money to others via simple and partners. rough this bank-less members to more smoothly low-cost SMS messaging— savings scheme, myAgro reduces and skillfully participate in without requiring a preexisting the consumption volatility for savings groups, develop credit bank account or access to a farmers that can arise during histories and strengthen their smartphone. Modelo Perú is pre-planting time when they buy social networks, enhancing led by the Peruvian Bankers most of their inputs. Since its the financial resilience of Association and is the first such founding in 2012, myAgro has impoverished communities and common mobile money platform helped farmers increase their individuals and empowering in the world with a specific focus average yields by 50-100% and them to withstand the shocks of on financial inclusion. their net farming income $150- natural disasters, resettlement 300 per farmer. and other crises. Innovator profiled on p.
Back to Innovations by Chapter . Innovator Profile cash-out and over-the-counter services. services. and over-the-counter cash-out Peru’s networkfor cash-in/ digital largest become confident platform soon will the BiM is Miguel banks, connected partner by its in addition to already thepoints , by the , end of ,agents least network fromagent to ,currently at BiM its expanding education institute. By financial by ASBANC’s majority-owned platform and which the is BiM manages collaborative and now that designed entity Director Pagos of Peruanos, the Digitales Arcesays Miguel Tellez, the Commercial in places where don’t banks yet exist,” “We are creating thisphysical network inremote those areas.especially to underbanked Peruvians, services financial to delivernational regulations e-money best and worked lawmakers with to establish ATMs, and bankbranches into one network connected theiragents, platforms, these to facilitate transactions. Modelo Perú and electronic networks wallets (POS) Sale already Point-of- had individual theirown microfinance which most of organizations, four its telecominstitutions, companies, and commercial largest and financial banks Perú isacollaboration among the country’s Modelo (ASBANC), Association Bankers by the Peruvian instead money Led cash. of mobile of the use through businesses other providers and costs for service financial reduceaims to significantly transaction also It unbanked or underbanked people. sector,financial or approximately million Peruvians who lack access to the formal to the over % of services financial (Billetera Móvil), BiM to called extend payments platform,nationwide digital toin provide aninteroperable e Modelo Perú was initiative introduced of charge in Director Commercial Miguel Arce Tellez -BiM Perú Modelo partner relations, Pagos Digitales Digitales Pagos relations, partner Peruanos (PDP) Peruanos are more agents. to familiar the banks’ which systems, POS own banks’ individual transactionsBiM to conducted be on the to allow for Ericcson now working with urbancenters.uptake of outside PDP is mobile network coverage and accelerate to reach limited or no with populations continue also will toIt refine services its on how topopulations the platform. use coach whocan agents a network of rural to MFIs PDP local create workingwith isalso to hard-to-reach populations. services social indelivering the government supporting leaders, and global one the industry’s of e-commerce to with Peru inpartnership (PP)remittances, introducingpeer-to-peer include ese increasing the volume of cell phone.”the thingsinthe meantime through bigger of lot the goalalternative to to with but cash, do a approaching the pyramid of the base an with traditional banking,” says. “We are Miguel “ is isadifferent way to thinkthan previouslyhad available been not inPeru. which platform inreal-time, asingle through to anywhere money send inthe country platform now,the BiM to customers enable years, from up the ,who are using fiveleast million Peruvians five inthe next mouth, Modelo Perú ishoping to reach at Now, and word-of- media social through from joined.” they this, benefiting saw banks the theircompetitors other successesearly convinced “When skeptics. its on board. 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Follow challenges and current view areas inrural inAfrica. inpoverty to living people services financial extend the MasterCard of to businesses Foundation Fundfor e purpose isto competition support Rural Prosperity . Follow https://financingthefuture.wsj.com/us/financial-inclusion past winners at: challenges and current view Foundation to that showcase solutions improve access financial for the poor. isaWall sponsoredby e initiative MetLife InclusionChallenge e Financial editorial Journal Street digital payments ecosystem. digital first the creationthrough the country’s of helping to improve inclusion financial Modelo Perú’s platform isincreasingly BiM many its of different efforts partners, However, and and error the trial through urban,clientbase. largely their existing, preference banks’ toparticipating first serve by mobile the lack of coverage and the communities hindered rural marginalized intoand expansion unbanked and projections on the platform well initial below transactions of the number with expected, BiM’s slower than been has growth early Back to Innovations by Chapter .
Innovation Profile payout, in line with the pre-decided relief . Insure My Yaks amount, for each animal killed. As a locally- A new kind of insurance may protect initiated program that shares benefits hard-to-reach nomads against equally among members, it has fostered livestock losses a feeling of local ownership and helped to stabilize herders’ incomes. It has also For nomadic herders high in the Himalayas engendered positive attitudes toward their or on the pasturelands of the Tibetan erstwhile enemies: locals believe that as a Plateau, livestock are the lifeblood of the result of the program, snow leopard numbers economy. So when a violent storm or are on the rise. mountain-dwelling predator claims one of their pack, it can have catastrophic A number of other livestock insurance consequences for their livelihoods. Enter models have been launched in the elevated Yak Insurance, a modern microfinance regions of Central and East Asia during the mechanism to help highland households past decade or so to compensate herders manage the climactic risks and natural for the loss of their grazing beasts to hazards that threaten their herds. depredation, disease and disaster. However, introducing innovative insurance schemes In the remote, rugged mountains of eastern to skeptical mountain shepherds who have Nepal, where domestic yaks are vital herd been husbanding their animals the same animals kept also for their milk, wool and way for generations has been no easy task. meat, a community-founded and managed Convincing them to pay insurance premiums livestock insurance scheme was designed not is a persistent challenge. Considering only to provide relief to herders for livestock that these mountainous areas have poor losses, but also to help balance the delicate communication, insurance streamlining is also a challenge in certain areas. Gaming the Innovation Profile alpine rangeland ecosystem. When left on their own to graze, the young yak calves—as system by falsely reporting animal deaths— well as baby goats and blue sheep—are easy and recirculating photos of dead yaks and game for the carnivorous snow leopards, sheep—can jeopardize the sustainability which experts believe number just - of cash-strapped insurance programs. And in Nepal. With each loss keenly felt, when the carcass of a calf has been stashed retaliatory killings against the endangered by a snow leopard or completely devoured mountain cats were evident. by scavengers, proper payoffs can be difficult to settle. Set up through a locally-banked seed Perhaps they could look to northern fund by the World India for some solutions. To ensure the Wildlife Fund Nepal authenticity of each claim there, a similar and University of social protection and wildlife conservation Zurich in , the program set up in Himachal Pradesh by the insurance scheme Nature Conservation Foundation in is part of the requires owners seeking compensation Snow Leopard Conservation Committees for their killed horses, cattle and yaks to program established in the Kangchenjunga prove they have not sold the meat or that Conservation Area—home to Mt. the animal has not died of disease—by Kangchenjunga, the third highest mountain taking an oath on the Dalai Lama. Although in the world. Yak-herding families who join some beneficiaries object to this practice, the insurance plan contribute a premium they continue to stand by the village-run of - Nepalese rupees a year (approx. insurance schemes that are enhancing US -) to a local fund. To guard against the prospects for themselves, their large- fraudulent claims, committee members bodied livestock and the carnivorous conduct on-site visits to assess the veracity predators alike. of each claim and decide on the insurance
Prism, like Digit, is designed to help young Digit, Prism, & Even Americans and financially vulnerable . A trio of fin-tech tools are helping households manage the complications of Americans better manage their money paying multiple bills that may be due at and build their savings scattered intervals. Prism currently serves more than , customers. For individuals who struggle to manage their finances and properly save for the future, Oakland-based financial health mobile app Digit provides its users a way to sock money Even was designed to help people with away with minimal effort. Headquartered unpredictable paychecks smooth their in San Francisco, Digit launched in income and manage their savings so that to automatically set aside funds in small, they can pay bills today and plan for the incremental amounts for its customers. future. Even functions as a digital safety net to give hourly and part-time workers A user creates an account, gives Digit access a tool to cope with erratic wages and to their checking account, and Digit analyzes unexpected expenses. It also provides them the user’s spending patterns and income a subscription-based alternative to high- history and uses a predictive algorithm to interest payday loans, overdraft fees and move small sums of money into an FDIC- other debt traps that can erode household insured Digit account. Digit only transfers economic stability. what the user can afford, at the times they are least likely to miss it. When users e Even app connects to an employee’s need money, they message Digit and the bank accounts and calculates their average requested funds are transferred back into monthly income and how widely their their checking account. paychecks vary, how long they have worked at their jobs, and monthly spending on Digit charges a monthly fee of . and housing, food transportation, and other Innovation Profile offers a quarterly Savings Bonus of % cash basics. Using an algorithm to analyze that back. By targeting younger individuals who data, Even provides real-time estimates of are unable to save money and wouldn’t do how much the individual can safely spend so on their own, Digit is betting it can get each month. In the months they earn less, people to trust computers to manage their Even allows clients to withdraw their wages money so that they don’t have to. ahead of time, loaning them the difference without interest. In times when earnings A mobile bill pay application called Prism, exceed their monthly average, the app developed by Prism Money, a Seattle- withholds the extra money and applies it to based startup acquired in by Handle their Even-managed savings account. It then Financial subsidiary PayNearMe, is providing uses that surplus either to cover low-income customers with a single easy-to-use platform months or repay no-interest loans that Even through which they can manage all of their automatically extends. bill payments in one place. Users connect their bank accounts and the accounts they Even charges individual users a at fee of use to pay their bills with Prism, which uses a week. It was initially available only to Microsoft’s secure cloud service, Azure, employees whose work hours and incomes to store and transmit data. e app then fluctuate from week to week. Services for syncs account balances and bills, notifies freelancers and other non-standard workers users when bills are due, and offers them rolled out in . the option to pay those bills directly and immediately or schedule payment for the ese three initiatives—Digit, Prism and future. Prism also offers a dashboard that Even—are all working to optimize services allows its customers to view their account for their customers, develop business balances alongside their bills, to help them models that can generate a profit, and bring avoid wasteful overdraft or late fees. some peace of mind and a little stability to financially stressed Americans.
Back to Innovations by Chapter Big Data, Small Devices (Better Livelihoods)
The Atlas of Innovation for Economic Stability F
Across the world, the proliferation of mobile devices is profoundly impacting who can receive and benefit from services to support the stabilization of their livelihoods. is trend is driven by the profitable expansion of mobile telephony and low-cost smartphones. At the same time, the revolution in big data and analytics, driven by data scientists and increasingly harnessed by entrepreneurs, enables delivery of information services that put new data in the hands of individuals and communities to support decision-making. Better data about people, their habits, their income and the markets in which they participate, and their environment (e.g. weather and soil) also make agricultural risk easier to manage for producers and easier to assess and insure from the perspective of the finance sector— reducing moral hazard and strengthening confidence among insurers. e use of new data underlies or supports many of innovations in all areas we have identified. But the ability to package multiple layers of top-tier information—including predictive analytics—for use by poor and vulnerable own-account agriculture producers, improve agricultural market coordination to increase incomes and reduce risk, and deliver these services to low-literacy populations are all the groundbreaking areas of current innovation explored in this section.
Back to Innovations by Chapter 8.1 Big Data, Small Devices (Better Livelihoods)
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WISE (Senegal) Twiga Foods (Kenya) The collaborative Wireless Founded in Nairobi in 2013, Twiga Solutions for Fisheries in Senegal Foods Ltd operates a mobile- (WISE) project, funded by the based, business-to-business (B2B) Qualcomm® Wireless Reach™ supply platform that links farmers initiative, is a mobile broadband to urban grocers with the aim solution launched in 2014 to make of consolidating the fragmented artisanal (small-scale, low-tech, produce market. Farmers alert Twiga low-capital) fishermen and fish through SMS when their produce processors more competitive. The is ready, and then Twiga picks up WISE project leverages advanced and delivers the produce directly to wireless technologies to collect and safest times to fish. WISE includes vendors, saving them a trip to the transmit data on local fish market a particular focus on addressing market and eliminating the need for prices, promote best fishing and the disadvantages in the fishery brokers. Twiga not only minimizes processing, health and hygiene value chain faced by women, who post-harvest losses through efficient practices through its video and text comprise the majority of small-scale logistics but also makes markets features, and provide fishermen and fish processors, supporting their more stable and predictable, by fish processors access to affordable capacity to use information and using its data to create future value credit through micro-lending communications technology (ICT), profiles of certain commodities to institution partners. The loans can economic sustainability, and helping protect farmers against price shocks. be accessed and transferred into a close the gender gap that has kept Twiga smooths income volatility for mobile money account through an women from benefiting fully from farmers, lowers costs for vendors, Android-based smartphone to invest their participation in the industry. and provides consumers higher in their operations or cover their off- WISE is a collaboration of FHI quality staples of known origin. In season expenditures. Other features 360, Qualcomm® Wireless Reach™, just a few years, Twiga has become include weather updates and ocean the Senegalese Food Security one of Kenya’s largest distributors of state conditions that use GPS to Commission, Intermondes and several basic food staples. apprise fishermen of the best and Tigo-Senegal.
60 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Agri-Fin/LISA (Indonesia) The Agri-Fin Mobile Program works with the private sector in Indonesia, FarmDrive (Kenya) Uganda, and Zimbabwe to develop Kenyan data analytics startup demand driven products and services FarmDrive is an alternative credit Avaaj Otalo (India) that will increase farmer yields scoring model that uses SMS and Voice4All, also known as Avaaj and income. Mercy Corps and its its own Android application to Otalo, is an interactive voice partners utilize affordable mobile build detailed credit risk profiles application to give small-scale data collection applications that for smallholder farmers. It uses farmers in India the latest enable farmers to monitor crop a credit scoring algorithm to information about agriculture conditions, validate field conditions aggregate diverse data streams markets and allow them to record, for micro-insurance claims resulting including weather, soil conditions, browse and respond to questions from drought or cyclones, and track market access and satellite imagery, and answers about farming. It was agricultural input distribution and combines that with data designed in 2008 as a collaboration through digital vouchers. Another input by farmers about revenues between UC Berkeley School of mobile app called LISA, developed and expenses. By analyzing this Information, Stanford HCI Group, by the Southeast Asian startup data, FarmDrive generates credit IBM India Research Laboratory, 8villages, a Mercy Corps partner, scores so that risk-averse financial and Development Support Center, allows farmers to receive agricultural institutions can know whether an Indian NGO. Its aim is to deliver tips, submit their problems to a farmer is creditworthy. In just digital information through basic experts, and report data on harvest a few weeks, farmers can apply smartphones to hard-to-reach and post-harvest activities via SMS. for a loan. Increasing access to farmers and overcome literacy Data collected by these mobile apps financing enables farmers to make and language barriers. Avaaj help financial institutions better more productive investments and Otalo inspired the founding of understand the risk profile of increase their incomes and savings. a partnership between Awaaz. farmers and help integrate Agri-Fin’s FarmDrive also aims to make De and KVK-Kheda to provide services into a single, comprehensive farming more attractive to young a similar two-way information mobile phone-based package. Kenyans, in order to reduce their platform that offers interactive voice Providing these services through need to migrate to cities where jobs broadcasts between agriculture mobile phones has the potential to are scarce, and improve rural food experts and farmers. Based on local reach millions of low-income farmers security. The loans are disbursed by needs, experts send customized in remote areas, boost productivity the mobile money transfer service information in local language on and promote greater financial M-Pesa. FarmDrive is also working crop production and livestock inclusion, which in turn can improve in partnership with Musoni Kenya, a husbandry to farmers, who can both livelihoods and food security at the tech-driven MFI, to disburse tailor- listen and respond with questions household and system levels. To made loan products to farmers. and feedback, thereby making date, Agri-Fin Mobile has reached agricultural interventions more over 1.2 million smallholder farmers. Innovator profiled on p. 62 effective for stabilizing livelihoods.
Back to Innovations by Chapter 61 . Innovator Profile (e.g. weather, interactions, climate, social sets and non-traditional data analytics this simple mobile technology, advanced track theirrevenues Using and expenses. effective way. to allowsfarmers also It inacost-grow portfolios theiragro-loan providers to service helpingtime financial to credit while at the same and underserved thereby theinstitutions, unbanked linking for smallholder of farmers histories financial Android application credit to detailed build own SMSand that its model uses scoring isanalternative credit FarmDrive farmers. phones to credit build for pyramid of base mobile that uses astart-up FarmDrive, Honours—Rita and PerisClass founded First graduatingAfter in—with providers. service andsmallholder financial farmers resolvedcapital, the gap between to bridge fromtheir communities derived alack of in productivity agricultural the lack of computer that and, science believing skills university,At their developed further they partners. business and soon-to-be friends NairobiUniversity of instant and became on their firstmet day students as at the academic careers to ey finding asolution. challenges these and laterof dedicated their Peris first-hand many experienced Bosire, and Kimani Rita communities inKenya, raised insmallholder farming young girls As instability. and poverty of them inanunbreakable cycle and revenuestheir yields while trapping leaving them to unable increase struggle, and finance agreat be can equipment, inputs, accessingcommunities, the necessary For land. of plots and households these areasrural by working on and small subsist the world’s of live majority e in large poor co-founders FarmDrive BosirePeris Rita Kimani and - FarmDrive continent. inKenyafarmers and many more across the are aimingto loans to extend million ahalf five years the next they totime within scale: entrepreneurs feel that thisisthe perfect the two smallholder farmers-cum-tech us, areas. rural towards greater inclusion in financial to make areal impact technology enabling prevalence is mobile of devices across Africa researchAfrican lab. Now, she says, the inIBM’sworked asoftware as engineer and later PricewaterhouseCoopers with technician adata as university she interned at While school. programs while inhigh basic writing at ayoung and started age Peris to computers Bosire was exposed and managed. the wayare work isconducted changing farm solutions and data-driven ways technology the given to achieve particularly the SDGs, and poverty to escape opportunity the best providesthat young agriculture Africans whofeels resonance Rita, with particular has nomantra one behind” “leaving of e SDG young across farmers Africa. youth voice programs to indesigning help In that capacity, she was anadvocate for Development Goals(SDGs)among youth. leaders to help promote the Sustainable the United Nations one the as young of by was selected In , Kimani Rita tools that require do not ownership. asset available assessment loan products and risk playing field for men and women by making at any and isleveling time, the financial simple mobile platform, accessible anywhere productsby its offering afree through and isdemocratizing FarmDrive lending data, satellite combined farm-level data) with Innovations Livelihood Better innovations: discover new TO WHERE of the completeConverting spectrum are to operations. direct used on-the-ground which process algorithms the data, analytics data stakeholders. Specialized agricultural and other banks, the cloudto farmers, and transmit securely through data data, the continuously from the field, aggregate tools to collect data digital and other ings, satellite networks, imagery, of Internet ecosystems local social by using viable economicallydevelopment sustainable, of their mobile phones. PRIDE facilitates the and anywhere anytime on languages local advice and information in agricultural access can farmers solutions, personalized and integrated IT mKRISHI’s specialized rough farmers. of resiliency market and improvefarming and the climactic collective power to promote scientific and leverages their experts and agriculture PRIDE partners with connects farmers development. and, ultimately, rural enterprises, support productivity, stimulate micro- local agricultural aimsto e initiative boost economies. inemerging particularly value chain, agriculture in the current promoted to overcome the inefficiencies platform and isbeing delivery service personalized mobile-based a proprietary PRIDE™, ispowered by TCS’s mKRISHI®, or Rural Enterprise, Integrated Digital innovative Its Progressive partnerships. and technologies digital through and revolutionizelivelihoods agriculture to hopes improve (TCS) Limited farmer Tata giant Services IT Indian Consultancy value agricultural the Improving TCS Pride chain in emerging economies economies emerging in chain through digital farming digital through . http://challengeprizecentre.org/prizes/ pastwinners at: challenges and view and several awards and India, inBangladesh sector for innovations. Follow non-agricultural current developing for world inNepal, including aData the challenge fishfarming Farming prizes Prize Driven challenges.org/ productivity.agricultural Follow http://datadrivenfarming. past winners at: challenges and current view information for and timely context-specific actionable, to smallholder farmers improve gains from to tested solutions be inNepal data-driven that deliver can seeks Future, Nesta partners, and other are by examples FeedSelected presented the here. supported ) e Data Farming Prize, Driven ere are several innovation challenges promoting many for which big data are of agriculture, localized. Nesta’s Open Data Challenges support data-driven solutions to solutions . )Nesta’s transform data-driven lives inthe Data support Challenges Open India areIndia PRIDE. using a million active across farmers states in the platform. who use Currently,partners offered to aservice as or data farmers from derive fees paid by opportunities Revenuepractices, employment. and rural profitability,yields, compliance best with increaseswell inaverage substantial as and fertilizer, pesticides of in the as use declines to contributed has meaningful TCS estimates that the PRIDE model resiliency.their financial improve and strengthen linkages market reduce increase theiryields, costs, risks, their information, minimize can farmers more with robustEquipped real-time processing theirproduce. and selling storing, more understand fully theiroptions for PRIDE time, to farmers enables harvest At returns. facilitatingto higher markets, produce of holdingsland and the supply and aggregating them cheaper), (making like andinputs fertilizer, labor, pesticides, demand by for consolidating scale agro- achievethen helpsfarmers economies of respond PRIDE to climate and risks. market more can farmer for effectively plan and the information aguide, as the AgriCrol™ Using predictive through analytics. derived protocol, personalized a state-of-the-art Crop Protocol), (Agricultural the AgriCrol™ epiece information land. of iscaptured in crops on the best farmers for particular their and demand forecasts are to advise used trends market and pests, disease and soil, present and future on the weather, data land the crop past, phase, planning During often prevails intheirlives. remove much the unpredictability of that to helps farmers interventions data-driven across the value chaininto evidence-based, transactions informationagricultural Back to Innovations by Chapter .
Innovation Profile Collective Security
The Atlas of Innovation for Economic Stability Gaps in basic protection of personal security exist across income contexts, but they are most acute in large urban areas with substantial income gaps in middle-income countries. e combination of rapid urbanization, lack of reliable or professionalized police forces, and the widespread prevalence of violent non-state actors like gangs or drug cartels, creates obstacles to personal security and therefore stability for the people who move through cities, especially pedestrians and those using public or shared transportation. In response, several notable innovations that provide for peer-to-peer reporting and mapping of violent incidents empower people “on the ground” to make real-time personal safety decisions. Some public services are also deploying advanced data and sensor-based approaches to monitor urban violence and streamline or improve emergency services delivery.
Back to Innovations by Chapter 9.1 Collective Security
Fogo Cruzado/Onde Tem Teroteio (Brazil) A pair of collaborative mobile phone apps are helping Rio de Janiero residents avoid stray bullets. Fogo Cruzado (Crossfire) and Onde Tem Tiroteio (Where the Shooting Is), or OTT, collect real-time reports from citizens and police about gunfire in the city and deliver instant alerts to nearby users. The Crossfire application, initially developed by Amnesty International CrashDetech (South Africa) Brazil and a local researcher in South Africa is one of the world’s 2016, became independent in DARU (Indonesia) most dangerous countries in 2018 with the collaboration of the DARU is a software application which to drive. To give motorists Update Institute. Fogo collects the developed by the Indonesia- peace of mind, Johannesburg- information—such as location and based Radya Labs that supports based entrepreneur Jaco Gerritis duration, injuries and fatalities, the Jakarta Fire Department developed CrashDetech, a and the parties involved, using the to strengthen its delivery of telematic mobile application that GPS on their mobile phones—and firefighting services. Through a automatically detects the sudden converts it into an interactive map Vehicle Tracking System (VTS) impact of a car crash and reduces of the city delivered on mobile & On-Board Unit application, emergency response times, and platforms. Alerts sent by the local DARU uses open data from the fire in doing so, saves lives. Using start-up OTT, through its mobile department, such as the location smart drive-detection technology, app as well as Instagram, Twitter of fire hydrants and nearby fire the mobile phone delivers and Facebook, also include reports stations, and then provides the instant alerts to the CrashDetch on broader crime incidents and public with data about local fire emergency contact center, which reach some 4.5 million people. The accidents and the real-time location dispatches the nearest paramedics popularity of these apps indicates of fire trucks. Fire accident data is to the crash location. It also sends the local demand for improved now being inputted manually and them the patient’s vital medical personal security. By generating a firefighting coordinated via analog information to ensure the most better picture of gun violence in the walkie-talkies, DARU is helping effective treatment. Launched in city, Fogo and OTT aim to inform the Jakarta Fire Department to 2016, CrashDetch aims to expand more effective public policies to automate and digitize the process, in a number of African countries address the problem and protect which was tested in 2017 and may and possibly in Central and South Rio’s citizens from danger. be deployed in short time. America as well.
66 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Usalama (Kenya) Nairobi, like many fast-growing cities, has a high crime rate in some Mobile Mapping (El Salvador) areas. This leaves pedestrians and Seguridad Inalámbrica (wireless drivers especially vulnerable to security) was created in 2010 by violent attacks and theft, while Qualcomm Inc. and project partners emergency response rates are WatchMe911 (Chicago) USAID, RTI International and low. Usalama Technology Limited WatchMe911, a fee-based mobile local law enforcement agencies developed a ‘panic button’ mobile safety application designed ‘for to strengthen tech-driven crime app that gives its users a stronger women, by women’, turns a user’s mapping in El Salvador. It used sense of security by connecting mobile phone into a personal 3G wireless technology to enable them directly to emergency service protection device. When a user law enforcement and municipal providers, which improves the feels threatened or needs help, a authorities in San Salvador to efficiency and reaction time of law couple of taps of the WatchMe911 share, map, and analyze data on enforcement and medical personnel. icon sends critical information crimes as they occur. Tigo, a leading Users activate the panic button by to emergency services and the telecommunications provider, issued shaking their smartphone three user’s support network. Additional participating police and government times. The phone immediately sends features include a timer that alerts officials with smartphones equipped a distress signal to the nearest friends and family if the user fails to with the Seguridad Inalámbrica police and fire departments, family check in by a specified time, a ‘panic’ application, GPS capabilities, camera members and every Usalama user mode that sends text messages and and other features that allowed within a 650-foot radius. Users GPS location to the user’s network them to send detailed incident can also share real-time security when she feels vulnerable, and a reports to the web-based crime information and receive alerts when feature that notifies the network database. Local violence prevention they enter high-crime areas. Usalama upon arrival at a stated destination. services also accessed the database currently has more than 5,000 WatchMe 911 creator Jill Campbell to develop geospatial analysis of users and is working with a number and her team have also launched a crime patterns. Developed with of private security and rescue version of the app for use by college free and open source software, companies, emergency facilities, and students called OnWatch to help Seguridad Inalámbrica provideed women’s organizations in Kenya to reduce incidents of sexual violence law enforcement with a crime- expand its services and reach. and abuse of college-aged women. fighting solution that was affordable The apps are available on iPhone and and attainable. Innovator profiled on p. 68 Android devices.
Back to Innovations by Chapter 67 . Innovator Profile sends adistresssends to call family and friends featuresSwahili. It a“panic button” that in or “security” a button, Usalama called at the of tap services tousers emergency amobiledeveloped platform that connects at university, learned they skills they the computer with programming Armed wecan solve this?” problemthere was andhow aserious said, “We saw services. and emergency security inKenya havevictims no way to access to discovered that mostaccident and crime soon and they had experienced his friends realized many of an ordeal that Marvin was It himunharmed. left but belongings stole ey hiscomputer and other daylight. inbroadattacked by agroup muggers of Around Marvin’s that time, was same friend apoliceman was nearby.” because “was able to access anambulance,” says, Marvin contact aparamedic. “ e onlyreason Iwas ere how to were none but knew witnesses, or no and means to nobody himhelp. get leg on the ground abroken lying with Marvin crashed intodriver acar. e accident left a motorcycle on hisway to work whenthe pillion on the back was of Limited, riding Technology Usalama of CFO and current co-founder Makau, A few years Marvin ago, Co-founders James Chege Makau andMarvin Usalama - Edwin Ingaji, and James and Chege Ingaji, Edwin L-R: Marvin Makau, Marvin L-R: solving aproblem.”solving much interest, showsthat it we are actually product “ ere’s is growing,” says Marvin. so “It’s to that always your see sign agood rollout and maybe even across beyond. Africa possible.” at includes to plans eventually toon own our allow for much as as scaling where we host the can platform servers is independent,” own our he says, get “to “And make sure infrastructure our then we’ll move us level”. to thatand next “help acceleratefunding will the company’s growth more hope ey grants and investment the proceedsusing to work on Usalama.” web development app for and then clients, like mobile and he says, “offering services on bootstrapping,” surviving been essentially the company attracts more “We’ve users. as Jamesbut rise thisfigure will hopes companies the that service, use security a month from the corporate and funds onlyafew hundred earns dollarscurrently Usalama model, asubscription-based As forpublicity around Usalama the world. continues to outlets generate media global donors. News coverage inCNNand other prospective and other corporate moguls of States to pitch the company to anaudience the United visited Ingaji Edwin CEO Usalama representatives tech companies. global of from aroundstartups the world well as as was invited other to with to Germany meet ishelping too. exposure International James in Africa. development health largest organization the AmrefHealth with Africa, partnered center.violence recovery recently also has It and the Nairobi Women’s Hospital gender providers, service emergency associations, residents’ firms, boarded private security director.and marketing since has on- It the company’sJames Chege, co-founder company our give credibility,” some says that entities “could with partnerships to grow. Usalama enabled then developed It and exposure grant awards media Extensive providers p.). (See service emergency accidents and domestic violence with road crime, of connects victims and also Developed with the support of donors and Safetipin partners including UK Aid, Ford Foundation . An app to make cities safer and more and e Asia Foundation, SafetiPin has since inclusive for women worked with more than cities in India, Colombia, Indonesia, Kenya and Philippines Actual violence and the fear of violence in and is also collecting data in South Africa India’s cities affects the everyday lives of and Malaysia. It has recently established a women and exacerbates gender inequalities. global partnership with Uber improve the e migration of increasing numbers of efficiency of data collection and to expand to women to the cities in search of employment more cities around the world. is reinforcing these problems and creating new challenges for the government, citizens SafetiPin data are available in various and other stakeholders to protect people in formats including maps, text reports, public spaces. and digital files which can be used by stakeholders to develop and deploy effective An Indian social enterprise, known as urban planning and monitoring responses, SafetiPin, designed a free map-based such as mobilizing limited municipal mobile app and online platform that uses resources for lighting, security, CCTVs, crowdsourced data on insecurity in urban and public transport at night. SafetiPin areas to make cities safer and more inclusive data collected in Delhi are enabling the for women. It was co-founded in by municipal police and urban planners to prominent women’s rights advocate Kalpana identify areas that are dark, unsafe and Viswanath, profiled on p. , and digital require improvement, as well as to measure tech entrepreneur Ashish Basu as one of a the safety score of bus stops and terminals. number of UN-supported initiatives to make In Bogota and Nairobi, city officials are cities safer and promote gender equality. using the data to identify unsafe areas. e Innovation Profile municipal government in Jakarta is using At its core is the safety audit, which SafetiPin to get feedback from citizens about measures the safety score of an area based their safety concerns in the city. on various parameters including street lighting, security presence and gender e app derives its name from a method of diversity. Using GPS location and trained self-defense traditionally used by women in auditors the app, called My SafetiPin, shows India, who would commonly carry an open the safety score of the user’s neighborhood safety pin to jab the open flesh of a would-be and provides information about the safest attacker. It is also an object that binds fabric routes to a destination. A personal safety together. In the face of rapid and continuing tracker feature allows for friends or family urbanization in India and other developing to observe a user’s location, while another economies around the world, SafetiPin hopes feature uses moving vehicles to capture to make cities smarter and more inclusive by photographs at night. SafetiPin serves as a promoting the safety of women and others digital platform for citizen engagement by now and for the future. generating community interest and enough data to advocate for safer public spaces, and for city authorities to inform better planning and governance. It also provides training programs for companies to address sexual harassment in the workplace and safety principles in public spaces.
Back to Innovations by Chapter should be more widely accessible to the . public. So they conceived of a smartphone safety audit app that “everybody can access, and anybody can contribute information to.” Initial funding support from UK Aid (DFID) and free advertising in a local newspaper helped them get SafetiPin off the ground before its full-scale launch in Delhi later that year. SafetiPin’s safety audit assesses public spaces based on nine parameters which include street lighting, security, gender diversity, and how safe a person feels in a space. “We wanted to take a qualitative tool and make it more quantitative so that we could begin to SafetiPin - measure safety,” Kalpana says. “And we felt Kalpana Viswanath that by measuring safety, we would be able to push stakeholders to try to improve their Co-founder and CEO of SafetiPin safety score. e creation of a unique mobile app to make “We focused clearly on the feeling of safety, cities safer for women in India was the result because we feel that women especially tend of an “unlikely meeting of the minds”, says to make choices based on the feeling, not SafetiPin co-founder and prominent gender only on hard data.” Innovator Profile Innovator rights researcher Kalpana Viswanath. As head of the advocacy NGO Jagori, meaning Within a year, SafetiPin had expanded to ‘awaken, women’ in Hindi, Kalpana had eight additional cities in India, through spent more than a decade working on partnerships with NGOs and data collecting gender and urban safety in India and several support from its users and a network of years with the United Nations and local volunteers who conducted safety audits governments helping to design safe city in low income neighborhoods and other programs in other parts of the world. places where people may not have access to smartphones and data are not available, In , Kalpana teamed up with her making the data collection and mapping tech-savvy husband, Ashish Basu, a digital exercises a collective effort. Municipal education entrepreneur, to launch SafetiPin. governments in Bogota and Jakarta Having used safety audit methods in her liked the app well enough that SafetiPin local advocacy work to make public spaces introduced versions in Spanish and Bahasa. safer for women, Kalpana felt those tools e company then augmented its existing
e Amazon Web Service (AWS) City on a Cloud Innovation WHERE TO Challenge supports local and regional governments, schools discover new and districts to develop innovations by simplifying IT innovations: workloads to enable governments and schools to deliver Collective services to their citizens and students. Follow current Safety challenges and view past winners at: Innovations https://aws.amazon.com/stateandlocal/cityonacloud/.
. Innovator Profile Innovator data with a second app called SafetiPin least begin to generate enough revenue to Nite, which uses smartphones mounted on reduce its reliance on grant funding. “We car windshields to photograph spaces and are happy to expand anywhere. But we are upload them for backend analysis together always looking to try to find a local partner with Google Maps and other big data. is when we expand because we find that that allowed SafetiPin to steadily increase the is the most sustainable way of working.” number of audits from about , to e municipal governments in Delhi and ,. Its recent partnership with Uber Bogota have already contracted SafetiPin to has enabled SafetiPin to grow even further. conduct additional rounds of mapping while In , they introduced My SafetiPin, an international organizations such as the UN upgraded version of the app, and it has now have expressed interest in incorporating the been downloaded more than , times app into their broader public infrastructure in more than cities in India and globally. improvement programs. e company is “Now we are able to go to city governments also working with universities to develop with much more robust data and they’re algorithms and machine learning techniques willing to listen to us.” that can measure safety scores without the data having to be collected and analyzed SafetiPin has no ambition “to become a huge manually. multinational organization” and it doesn’t plan to charge its users. At the same time, Kalpana is confident that SafetiPin “the app space is very crowded, and people can continue to grow and engage more aren’t usually very interested in apps which stakeholders and more citizens on the have a social dimension.” But Kalpana hopes streets to contribute data collectively in that collaborating with more cities and order to make cities safer and more inclusive forging more partnerships will enable it to for women and men alike. expand its data collection activities and at
Back to Innovations by Chapter PASSPORT Personhood & Rights
The Atlas of Innovation for Economic Stability Land Owner
Securing basic rights can be difficult for poor and vulnerable individuals and enterprises in low-income contexts, especially where public institutions are weak. Most other forms of economic stability must be built on the foundation of legal recognition of personhood, property, and contracts, with the fundamental right to legal identity codified in the SDG target 16.9. Recent innovations, both public and private, seek fortify the basic rights of personhood for men and women, often by establishing secure digital identities at scale. Important innovations address women’s access to and control of property, documentation and assertion of land rights for marginalized individuals and communities, broadening access to the formal justice system, and ensuring access to health care for women. These developments are critically important in the least stable situations—cases such as forced migration in which refugees may lack verifiable identity, and in post-conflict situations in which conflicts over land ownership can re-awaken conflicts and delay reconciliation.
The Atlas ofBack Innovation to Innovations for Economic by Chapter Stability 73 . Personhood & Rights
Transmit (Cambodia) Pact developed the mobile application Transmit with a grant from USAID to help Cambodian citizens better communicate and track complaints registered with local governments. e app is linked to a web-hosted public database and allows selected local leaders to voice critical issues—largely related to natural resource management, access to justice and basic human rights—to their local authorities and then follow up on those complaints. By making the documentation, monitoring and analysis of issues Cadasta (several) raised with local authorities more Cadasta Foundation, a nonprofit transparent and accessible, Transmit Defe Zap (Brazil) based in Washington, D.C., was aims to improve the responsiveness launched in 2015 with funding and downward accountability of local An online advocacy tool called from DFID and Omidyar Network government to Cambodian citizens. DefeZap is giving residents in Rio to meet the growing demand of de Janiero’s favelas a real-time channel to report abuses and seek documenting land and resource Women’s Land Rights justice against perpetrators of state rights for those left out of formal Sensitization (Burundi) violence. DefeZap is an automatic land administration systems in Under customary law in Burundi, a referral system launched in 2016 emerging economies. Cadasta woman’s rights to land ownership is by Brazilian NGO Meu Rio (My works to tackle land administration often subject to the superior right Rio), with support from the Open constraints with easy-to-use digital of a male family member, inhibiting Society Foundation, that collects tools and technology designed women from defending their claims crowdsourced videos, photos and to help its partners efficiently in land disputes. e Dutch NGO text reports of extrajudicial violence document, analyze, store, and Stitchting ZOA, with support from and connects to existing mobile share critical land and resource the Government of the Netherlands, apps, such as Fogo Cruzado (see p. rights information—particularly launched a land tenure registration 66 ). When a notification arrives in places where governments are program in the south of Burundi. through its dedicated WhatsApp failing in delivering the public good Together with the intergovernmental number, DefeZap’s algorithms and of equitable and affordable land International Development Law a team of investigators process the administration. Providing low-cost Organization (IDLO), they facilitated data and make it public on social and easy-to-use digital tools to at- pilot dialogues in select areas with networks and its own interactive risk communities and individuals local authorities, traditional leaders, map feature. e information is enables them to make data-based religious leaders, and men and used to build a legal claim against decisions that can incrementally women from the broader community the culprits, for journalists to gather strengthen their rights to land and to discuss the barriers that prevent information on state violence, and resources. It also helps them prepare women from registering to own to promote wider police reform. for and recover from disasters and land as well as potential solutions To ease favela residents’ fears of helps governments plan and deploy that protect their rights within the reprisals by authorities, DefeZap services and infrastructure where framework of customary law. e allows those who report to remain they are needed. Cadasta Platform pilot raised gender-specific awareness anonymous. At the end of 2017, is being implemented in India, and community consensus, DefeZap had received about 300 Cameroon, Dominican Republic, demonstrating that meaningful video submissions and used them Indonesia, Nigeria, Mozambique, improvements in the recognition of to launch more than 140 state Colombia, Bangladesh, Kenya, women’s customary and statutory investigations. Tanzania, Haiti, Nepal, Myanmar, rights to land are possible. Kosovo, and the United States.
T PASSPOR
Land Law (Mozambique) ere is no private ownership Land Owner of land in Mozambique—all land is the property of the State. Following the end of the civil war in the 1990s, the Government of Mozambique appointed an Inter- Ministerial Land Commission which oversaw the drafting of a new Land Policy and Land Law Village Courts (Bangladesh) Legal Aid (Haiti) with the objectives of securing the e Government of Bangladesh e National Legal Aid System land rights of rural communities enacted a system of village courts project in Haiti was implemented in while also encouraging investment, in 2006 to help low-income rural 2007 to provide free legal assistance agricultural production, and job residents to adjudicate small to low-income individuals as an creation. e law does not confer disputes over debt, land, crime, innovative solution to the lack of full ownership, but provides for the and other minor non-criminal access to justice. It was established right of individuals, communities offences. After years of weak by the United Nations Stabilization and entities to obtain long-term implementation and low utilization, Mission in Haiti and international or perpetual rights to use and the UN Development Program NGOs in collaboration with benefit from the land. Communities partnered with the government Haitian bar associations. Attorneys and individuals can offer proof of in 2009 to launch the Activating from Legal Aid Bureaus (Bureaux their land rights acquired through Village Courts in Bangladesh pilot d’Assistance Légale) provide clients customary law or good-faith program with a number of local legal advice, legal representation, occupation through oral testimony, governments. e program trains and mediation services in to overcome the expensive and local officials and court assistants alternative dispute resolution burdensome obstacles of surveys, on legal procedures and case record cases. Free legal consultations are registration and titling. However, management and conducts activities also offered on a range of non- lack of formal documentation and to increase awareness and use of criminal issues such as civil, labor, registration is a disadvantage to the courts. Above all, it provides a and commercial law. e legal aid prove such land occupancy rights. legal mechanism to resolve disputes system’s future is in doubt, however, While the Land Law’s recognition between residents, particularly those as it is currently funded entirely of the important role of traditional related to money, land and business. by international aid; when its two authorities in land administration e ability to resolve disputes in this main contributors stopped funding has helped reduce conflict among way builds trust in the country’s the system in 2012, all bureaus populations returning to rural areas laws and judicial systems, which outside the capital shut down. To following the civil war, its efficacy in may encourage marginalized groups that end, the Haiti Justice Sector stimulating economic development such as the poor and women to Strengthening Programme, funded and stability remain in question, seek improved access to justice and by USAID, plans further support to due especially to implementation economic stability through use of strengthen Legal Aid and improve challenges. the courts. its operational effectiveness.
Back to Innovations by Chapter . Innovator Profile says that much achieved progress been has collected nearly ,signatures. Kamla Twitter on change.org while acampaign men andof women share on their views saw inJuly thousands “Tweet-a-thon” and inpublicspaces. posted A designed and agroup young of artists Kamla inHindi, Urdu thatslogans and English dozens included simple of e campaign to afamily.” belonging of them asense giving make “to them stronger also but socially, by women more economically independent #PropertyForHer only aimsto not make to the wives or daughters, their assets of familiesencouraging to pass on apart violence, nowhere she has to go.” By doesn’t have afallback ifthere’s position, awoman secureviolence. isnot and “If and protection from domesticsecurity improvesproperty awoman’s financial that access to even the of smallestbit cites academic studies which show Kamla change my name.” entirely family, new also and inmost cases “and then Ihave explains, to go toKamla an ifIwant aroof over my head,” married get “ ismeans Ihave inheritance. through to primarily on to ispassed sons, property that determine Asia in much South of norms socio-cultural Discriminatory prevent women from or homes. land owning to overcome that the cultural barriers trade andnetworks, othersworking unions, society civil group NGOs, of an assorted #PropertyForHer,called together bringing for women Asia, inSouth rights property to promote media on social equal campaign ahigh-profile led , of Kamla beginning she “patriarchal calls injustice”. the At what against out womenof and speaking past years workingfor the empowerment dedicated has the Bhasin mostof Kamla movementRising, Billion the global One of network Sangat and the region’s coordinator feminist afounder Asian the South of As #PropertyForHer Co-founder Kamla Bhasin #PropertyForHer - on paper.”on actually andonly not property inherit considered be that daughters heirs and can says, make anacceptable “to it idea Kamla and articles,” slogans songs, go on writing promote gender equality. “We have just to continue to confrontAsia forces these to and groups South of inIndia ousands around the world. and harassment abuse sexual is extensive #MeToo campaign media demonstrates how conspire women’s against e social rights. also allkinds of fundamentalisms religious to “capitalist as patriarchy”. e spread of refers what Kamla allcomprise stereotypes that promote dangerous gender roles and industries male-centric film and other like media women, well as popular as that objectify and cosmetics industries is far from over. e massive pornography for women,against the fight gender equality forces powerful of plenty arrayedWith still daughters.” to their theirproperty familieswith giving tell me that to my had do anything slogans gender equality, isgoing that to nobody “ ere’s for much so going on insociety accomplishments to #PropertyForHer. she’sBut ready not to any attribute these of isincreasingly condemned. and misogyny universities offer gender studies programs, nearly all principles, gender equality andchallenged increasinglyincorporate several Patriarchal decades. laws are being over inIndia the past on gender equality capacity and atcapacity we time the same have huge human underutilized of surplus this huge female doctors into the workforce. “We have healthcare to remote areas while reintegrating founded to deliver doctHERs quality (who haveZafar the organization), since left team,medical Dr. and Dr. Sara Khurram Iffat two former employees from the Naya Jeevan potential,” human of he and So he explains. statistic loss and ahuge that’s astaggering “Given the healthcare the country, of needs tounable practice after medicine marriage. % them, ,women, or some of left graduates are constraints women, social have where school allmedical of % roughly femaleof doctors InPakistan, and nurses. the companywhich led to anetwork assemble for reproductiveespecially issues, health female when dealingwith ease physicians, Naya Jeevan’s female memberswere more at Dr. discovered soon that many Asher of others connected to corporate value chains. femalein Pakistan, workers and particularly products and informal workers to low-income healthcare and micro-health insurance dedicated to providing affordableenterprise asocial meaning New Life inSanskrit, Ten years he founded ago, Naya Jeevan, for children vulnerableand other populations. access to healthcare opportunities and other in where gulf the widening he witnessed Asia Hasan made frequent to Asher South visits and achild growing inthe up United Kingdom, As Jeevan Naya of CEO and Founder Dr. Asher Hasan - doctHERS co-founder of doctHERS doctHERS of co-founder happen on the ground.”happen it actuallymaking they’re the credit because all are ey really the ones who deserve whom are women, from the scenes. behind team, management allof senior our of the work “Ilike to support explains. Asher by women built for been has women,” Dr. femaleempowering doctors. “ is business while populations to underserved and affordablesustainable services health approach anew tois pioneering providing commercially inPakistan, viable doctHERs the first companyAs to make telemedicine Unilever’ssell goods. micro-retailers and micro-distributors who linked to corporate value its chainincluding direct employees to also but beneficiaries onlyto not its andhealth wellness services family is Unilever which issponsoring clients private largest its companies. of One and agencies government with partnerships continues to public-private through scale towaiting activated be doctHERs as active female , doctors another with clinically has e network currently alaptop or tablet. via ultrasound, and talkdirectly can to patients EKG suchas tools, clinic’s and diagnostic consultation. e doctor access can the and on-demand treatment HDvideo via accesswith evaluations in-person to both remotely to doctors located provide patients anationwide with network of who liaises anurse patientwith care coordinator isstaffed clinics virtual doctHERs’ of Each to-face care provided by the intermediaries. mobile face-consultations devices with via blends /telemedicine, doctHERs video rough to connect toenough the network. savvy and are technologically language, the local speak nurses that are trusted, front-line workers, health and midwives, community-based suchas intermediaries tablet-equipped consumers, via health who work from home to underserved femaleconnects remotely-located doctors healthcare platform digital doctHERs’ touch.” the human of while retaining the potency the technology twothe power using of links just doctHERs healthcareunmet needs. 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People/Innovator Profile . Private Initiatives for Secure Digital Identities Two innovative organizations are deploying blockchain-based digital identities to deliver social, financial, and health services to vulnerable refugees, migrants, and other undocumented or remote populations. Making Cents International & BanQu Digital Identities for Syrian Refugees Since fighting broke out in , more than . million Syrians have fled to Lebanon and Jordan. In their new environment, they have struggled to develop viable livelihoods due to a variety of reasons—from a lack of assets to unclear labor laws. Among these challenges, the absence of a past ranks high. opportunities for vulnerable populations, Due to the lack of cross-border identification while BanQu is a technology company mechanisms and the haste of their flight, that has developed a distributed ledger refugees arrived in their countries of (blockchain) based digital identity solution. refuge without evidence of educational Together, they are working with local achievement, verifiable work experience, or microfinance institutions to develop digital credit histories. Absent this information, economic identities for Syrian refugees. e
Innovation Profile they have had difficulty obtaining economic identities will enable Syrians to meaningful work or finance, as employers capture business information and financial and financial institutions are hindered from transactions on the BanQu platform in assessing their skills or credit-worthiness. a way that is verifiable, portable, and eir uncertain future is also a challenge, as immutable. Because identity information potential employers or lenders hesitate to provides credible work and credit histories engage with refugees not knowing if they for lenders, they will facilitate access to loans will return home in the next week or year. for refugees upon return to Syria. Likewise, Worse still, when these refugees return the identities will incentivize repayment of home, they will face the same problem, as loans in Jordan since the refugees will know they will not be able to communicate their that their credit record, whether good or bad, accomplishments while as a refugee. will be communicated to lenders in Syria. Digital economic identities present a e pilot will be implemented through early potential solution to this challenge. with , Syrians and scaled up to Educational certificates, employer additional refugees and other countries, if it references, and credit transactions, verified shows promise. by the issuer and stored in a personal “digital e pilot will include a rigorous evaluation locker,” can provide Syrian refugees with the component designed to learn whether the performance history they need to improve digital identity has an impact on credit their livelihoods while as refugees, and availability and repayment. In addition, restart their lives when they return. Making Cents International will measure Making Cents International and BanQu are changes in “hope” among refugees as one currently piloting an initiative to test the way to evaluate whether the creation of concept of economic digital identities for an identity—with the specific purpose of Syrian refugees in Jordan. Making Cents is helping refugees organize their data and an international development consultancy facilitate their return—has an impact on that specializes in improving economic their resilience.
iRespond refugees in nine UN-run camps along the ai-Myanmar border. With the camps slated . Giving identity to invisibles – the over to close in the coming years, the refugees’ one billion people without formal identity futures are yet to be determined. Since late , iRespond has been collaborating e inability to positively match a person to with the UN International Organization their identity is one of the most fundamental for Migration and the International Rescue barriers to the delivery of humanitarian Committee to capture the biometric data of services. For refugees and other vulnerable the people living in the camps before they people who lack documentation of their close to provide the identification they will births, health history, education, or any need to gain access to social services from record to prove their basic personhood, government agencies. Without an official accessing aid, establishing a life in another identity, undocumented persons are at country or returning to their country of greater risk of “disappearing” into the grey origin may not be possible. economy of commercial sex work or other unregulated domestic and service industries. A Seattle-headquartered technology e IDs can also be taken with them if they solutions nonprofit called iRespond has return Myanmar or if they resettle in a created a proprietary process that combines third country. biometrics with blockchain technology to provide such individuals with a unique iRespond is also working with the ai identity (UNiD), which enables them to government to create identity solutions receive healthcare, education and financial to reduce human trafficking and slavery services. iRespond’s identity solutions of migrant workers, particularly from capture the body’s own signature—namely neighboring countries, including those the unique signature of the iris—and who work in ailand’s seafood and Innovation Profile convert that into an encrypted information fishing industry. In Myanmar, iRespond is code comprised of a twelve-character improving infectious disease delivery and numeric sequence. e files of the encrypted care to at-risk populations and to support IDs are so small that UNiDs for the entire anonymous and privacy-protected HIV population of the United States could fit on a testing across the country. single micro USB card. e iris signature does not change significantly during one’s life and, protected by the blockchain, it can never be corrupted or forged. is built-in security system thus prevents duplication or fraud and protects the privacy of every individual’s identity. e databases can operate without an internet connection and can be used off the grid and then synched back once in contact with a wireless or other network. In ailand, iRespond is now providing identity to stateless persons from Myanmar. Roughly , people are living as
e Human Rights Innovation Initiative, supported by Civil Rights WHERE TO Defenders, seeks to identify and develop new ways to improve the discover new security and impact of human rights defenders in their daily work, innovations: particularly through digital solutions. Follow current challenges and view Human and past winners at: https://crdinnovation.org/. Civil Rights Innovations
The Atlas ofBack Innovation to Innovations for Economic by Chapter Stability India Innovation Laboratory
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India has been uniquely positioned to deploy innovations in all categories identified by this project drawing on the country’s deep technological capabilities and unusual political consensus around digitally-enabled modernization of legal identity, financial inclusion, and social protection. Several additional innovations from India, pertinent to the preceding chapters, are presented here to provide a more complete picture of the depth of the emerging ecosystem. While not without controversy, India’s digital initiatives represent the best current example from the middle income world of an emerging political economy in which public digital infrastructure empowers both public and private entrepreneurial initiatives that contribute directly to economic stability and broad-based inclusion.
Back to Innovations by Chapter . India - Innovation Laboratory
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#PropertyForHer Gender rights advocates in India MFIN Connect launched the #PropertyForHer rough its newly developed social media campaign in mid-2017 Android application, the LOOP with the intention to secure equal Microfinance Institutions Network Loop is a mobile-based aggregation property rights for women across (MFIN) of India has introduced and transport initiative of Digital South Asia. With messages on country’s first digital financial Green, a development organization, Twitter and Facebook and a petition literacy tool to teach people about that saves time and money on change.org, #PropertyForHer, microfinance. MFIN Connect for small farmers in India and backed by ActionAid India, appeals to educates clients from under-served Bangladesh by helping them access men to support the property rights communities about how to access local markets and find the best of their wives, daughters and sisters loans and avoid the risk of over- prices for their produce. Farmers and encourages women to demand indebtedness that can result from achieve economy of scale and their rightful share in the ownership informal and unsecure borrowing. better collective bargaining power and control of property. Several e app has different modules by aggregating their crops across countries in South Asia have laws available in a number of local several smallholder farmers through that guarantee women’s property languages that incorporate audio- village-level agricultural extension rights, but implementation is often visual modules to coach people workers. ese aggregators hindered by patriarchal social norms how to use an ATM card and their collect produce daily, oversee its and discriminatory customary biometric digital ID as well as how transport to and sale at market, laws that force women to give up to access credit and protect their and disburse payments to farmers. their claims on ancestral property. rights as a borrower. e app’s ready Loop’s integrated technology Guaranteeing women rights to reckoner feature enables clients to stack uses an Android application property can increase their economic easily calculate their loan interest for aggregators to efficiently and independence and, in doing so, can rates, repayment schedules and transparently record collections, also curb gender-based violence by the total amount they will need to sales, delivery costs and other data allowing women to walk away from pay. Designed to work even in low- in a digital ledger, and send farmers abusive relationships and build connectivity areas, MFIN Connect SMS receipts as record of their better futures for their children. is providing underbanked Indians transactions. e Loop initiative Several organizations involved with with more equitable access to credit has made it possible for thousands the campaign are incorporating the as well as the opportunity to achieve of farmers to access new markets, issue of women’s property rights into greater financial independence and reduce their transport costs and their existing work. build sustainable livelihoods. MFIN increase incomes, and free up time aims to deliver financial services to Innovator profiled on p. for other activities. 100 million people by the year 2020.
India Stack and DigiLocker India Stack is a suite of application and share digital copies of official programming interfaces (APIs) that documents without the need to enables the government and private print or sign paper documents. companies to deploy a presence- DigiLocker account holders can less, paperless, and cashless service access banking services, medical delivery system while radically records, and government benefits Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana transforming India’s identification and assert ownership rights of e government of India’s Micro and payment processes. At their business and property. Units Development and Refinance its foundation is a biometric Simple, biometric verification Agency (MUDRA) Bank was identification database (Aadhaar) of documents and certificates established in 2015 to govern the that gives every citizen a unique, improves stability for government microfinance sector and benefit permanent, digital ID number departments, financial institutions, small entrepreneurs, who often linked to their biometric data that and private business, and enhances struggle to access loans and other allows them to open a bank account transparency and accountability for financial products. e bank’s instantly and without any physical users when signing contracts and flagship program, Pradhan Mantri documentation. In fewer than seven other important documentation. Mudra Yojana (PMMY), was set years, 1.1. billion Indians have been Privacy and security concerns up to bridge this funding gap by issued an ID number after having aside, India Stack and DigiLocker extending affordable loans to their fingerprints and retinas are making impressive advances microbusinesses through public scanned and stored in the national in bringing millions of previously- and private banks, MFIs, and non- biometric database. Users can then unbanked Indian citizens into the banking finance companies. e link their bank account, ID number, formal economy. To scale further loans are used for non-farm income and phone number to create a will require a tremendous change generating activities including simplified payments address, to in the behavior of India’s many manufacture, transport, trade, and which employers can make easy low-income, digitally-illiterate services. In its mission to ‘fund the and direct salary payments through consumers. unfunded’, the PMMY program a single interface. e third layer proactively identifies and extends of the stack enables individuals to loans to small entrepreneurs, use their biometrics data and ID including first-time borrowers, to number to withdraw cash from their Avaaj Otalo accounts, access credit, and safely give them the confidence and the (p.61) capital they need to expand their send payments to others through activities. PMMY has extended their mobile phone. Operating as Gandhi Rural Employment Act more than USD 50 billion in loans to part of the India Stack platform is (p. 46) more than 58 million small business the digital repository DigiLocker, SafetiPin owners in India, around three a cloud storage space for Indian (p.69, 70) quarters of which are women. citizens to securely store, retrieve,
Back to Innovations by Chapter of financial services and insurance products . on top of newly verified identities, and guaranteed rural employment schemes. e Aadhaar system is the foundation of the India Stack (p. ), an open-source project explicitly designed to address several dimensions of social protection in a way that stimulates both public- and private-sector innovation. As Indian software industry Why India? think tank iSPIRIT noted: “India Stack is India has been uniquely positioned to a set of open Application Programming deploy innovations in all categories Interfaces (APIs) and systems, setup as a identified by this project drawing on the public good, to allow government entities, country’s deep technological capabilities businesses, startups, and developers to and unusual political consensus around use a unique digital Infrastructure towards digitally-enabled modernization of civic presence-less, paperless, and cashless service participation and social protection. is new delivery.” ese utilities simultaneously— social infrastructure provides the capacity if incompletely—address personal, civic, “to increase the resilience of Indian society functional, and entrepreneurial inclusion, to change and propel the country into the and align with SDG targets . on legal st century digital economy.” While not identity and . on improved social uncontroversial, this effort represents the protection. best current example from the developing What is unique is that they do so in a way world of an emerging political economy in that structurally allows for nearly limitless which public digital infrastructure empowers innovation by technology entrepreneurs— both public and private entrepreneurial both social and profit-motivated—and initiatives that contribute directly to across domains that require identity economic stability, inclusion, and social provision and verification, paperless protection. transactions, and payments infrastructures. Innovation Profile Lab A thorough treatment of India’s innovation e open APIs of the India Stack mean that landscape would require an Atlas of its own, entrepreneurs—not just large government but it is well-documented in recent literature contractors—can equally draw on critical chronicling India’s emerging public digital identity verification services to extend ecosystem. Most notable are advances banking, payments, financial, educational, in rural social and economic inclusion, a and other services to formerly unreachable number of which are delivered via accessible or un-servable populations. Because the digital technologies, typically mobile Aadhaar platform has been built on the phone-based, and backed by the expansion principles of openness and vendor neutrality, of basic personhood through digital as it has created an ecosystem that enables a identities; digitization of land records; multitude of identity applications to be built new intergovernmental coordination on top of it, “allowing service providers to arrangements spanning the national and transform service delivery in a number of historically powerful state governments; innovative ways.” Not only does technology as well as new forms of public-private and vendor neutrality facilitate competition partnership with banks and mobile network and innovation, but also “prevents possible operators (MNOs) to deliver social benefits technology ‘lock-in’, which can increase costs digitally. ese developments enable lower- and flexibility over time.” waste delivery of social benefits, expansion
Illustrating this potential, in , of social protection, especially access and Dalberg Advisors and iSPIRT held the utilization for marginalized sub-groups; . #BuildOnIndiaStack to stimulate innovation that it fails to address Indian states’need to from early-stage entrepreneurial ventures maintain and improve birth registries; the offering tech-based solutions leveraging the significant geographical variation in uptake India Stack platform. e competition, which across states, with particularly low levels was co-hosted with Bharat Innovations in marginal communities of the Northeast; Fund, Omidyar Network, and Unitus and the significant transfer of resources to Seed Fund, sought submissions related to private contractors in launching the system, “digital lending and supporting activities, which raises the possibility of a “Card such as alternative credit scoring; sector Cartel.” At a more fundamental level, the specific affordable digital finance services system has been criticized for representing such as health insurance or education a shift towards “a level-playing field for loans; sector specific digital services such state and market alike, where the exclusive as skilling and certification, property conception of client/consumer takes registration agreements, patient-centric precedence over the inclusive idea of political healthcare management”, and other related citizens.” platforms. From submissions, twelve finalists presenting innovative approaches Nevertheless, Aadhaar and the India Stack built on the India Stack for e-governance, platform represent an innovative approach healthcare, education, fintech, environment, to establishing verifiable identities on and agriculture competed for funding which an entire public-private ecosystem to (US,/INR lakh), mentorship, support personal and household economic coaching, and collaboration. stability is growing. e system is not without controversy. Legal objections have been raised and are still in adjudication regarding the mandatory use of Aadhaar to access social programs. At a more practical level, use of
applications developed on this platform Innovation Profile Lab require basic and digital literacy and judgement about the use of digital tools, which creates challenges in reaching India’s most vulnerable rural populations. Other critiques of Aadaahar include questions of whether it can improve the distribution
Several innovation challenges for various themes are offered in India. Selected examples are presented below. WHERE TO discover new India Innovation Initiative (i) is jointly promoted by the Confederation of Indian Industry and government innovations: agencies to support the development and scaling of homegrown science and technology-driven innovations India for commercial and social ventures. Follow current challenges and view past winners at: http://www. Innovations i.ciiinnovation.in/India-Innovation-Initiative-.php. e India Innovation Growth Programme (IIGP) offers both the University Challenge and the Open Innovation Challenge, to promote innovation and acceleration of industrial and social solutions developed by the academic and technology communities. Follow current challenges and view past winners at: http://www.indiainnovates.in/OpenChallenge.aspx.
Back to Innovations by Chapter 12 Conclusions and Recommendations
86 The Atlas of4 Innovation5 for6 Economic7 Stability8 9 10 11 12 The Atlas of Innovation for Economic Stability 87 Conclusions and Recommendations
e purpose of this Atlas is to present novel and compelling innovations related to economic stability. Nonetheless, four broader conclusions and recommendations for global development emerged from analysis of and reflection on our findings.
First, economic stability is central to the global development agenda and should be identified and promoted as a cross-cutting enabler. Part of the mission of this project is to catalyze greater interest in the role of economic stability as central to achieving inclusive growth. Our research and conversations with development influencers found a great deal of latent support for this idea. However, because the concept of stability encompasses several disciplines—macroeconomic management, investment promotion, financial inclusion, MSME-focused regulatory reform, social safety nets, and personhood and rights—it does not have a coherent or unified constituency, and is often absent from these dialogs. Economic stability as we understand it is an intrinsic goal or a prerequisite of six of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and more than twenty targets, including ending poverty and hunger, generating sustained and inclusive economic growth and industrialization for all, reducing inequality, and building peaceful and inclusive societies with accountable institutions, among others. However, across the entire SDGs, “stability” appears only once, in target ., and even then only in the context of macroeconomic stability. One senior social policy expert described stability as ever- present but rarely mentioned, like “fish that can’t see the water they’re swimming in,” the exception being among those active in the OECD social policy community and development economists. We found that development economists tend to recognize that stability affects individual and firm-level investment decisions, but many approach stability too much in the aggregate, misunderstand the factors that are considered in these decisions, or make questionable assumptions about the “rationality” of decision- makers. ey therefore often neglect the micro-level mechanisms that are the focus of this Atlas, even though nearly half of the indicators in WBG’s Doing Business relates to predictability of the business environment—a foundation of stability. Stakeholders in global development can strengthen a number of disciplinary conversations by recognizing economic stability as a natural, cross-cutting enabler of their better-established development goals, and, based on the evidence presented here, into which a great deal of private investment is currently flowing. While the SDGs are well-established, donors and other stakeholders can incorporate stability-related objectives and indicators into programs designed to achieve these goals. Economists in multilateral institutions and international donors, and those responsible for economic planning and risk assessment, can more deliberately prioritize the dimensions of stability that impact household- and firm-level decision-making, while also exploring
how to incorporate data on the impact of private financial and non-financial services uptake alongside more common indicators of economic performance. Impact investors supporting business models that improve livelihoods can and should purse income stability alongside income growth as an investment objective and impact measurement.
Second, our ideas about economic stability need to become more dynamic to keep up with the pace of technology-induced change in the economy. It is also very important to think about stability not as the opposite of growth or change, but as the ability to reduce the effects of volatility on the individual, household, firm, community, and country. In light of anticipated disruptions of labor markets driven by relentless technological change, more dynamic approaches to stability should work to prepare people for a rapidly changing future—by creating adaptive capacity to thrive in rapidly changing conditions as well as greater capacity to anticipate and prepare for change. We call this Dynamic Resilience. Dynamic Resilience strategies should aim to harness financialization, big data, and access via mobile technology to cope with both longstanding and new challenges. e innovations in this Atlas are, by and large, focused on improving the adaptive capacity of individuals and small firms, though a few touch on the anticipatory dimension as well. New data-driven insurance products for farmers help manage future risks to income. Real-time labor market information and training products enhance decision- making with the most current evidence. e Government of Indonesia’s use of big data to make macroeconomic forecasting more “real time” enables faster policy adaptation. As new artificial intelligence, machine learning, and predictive analytics methods become more common, so too will technologies that enhance anticipatory capacity, providing better information about likely futures, and spawn new methods of reducing financial risk across the spectrum of non-standard livelihoods. Putting anticipatory technologies to work for those who need them will rest on the capacity, particularly among poor and vulnerable people, to effectively select and use these tools. is, in-turn, depends on basic literacy, financial literacy, and developing critical judgement about the use of services. Ensuring diffusion of new innovations to base-of-pyramid users worldwide is likely to remain a central focus of global development practice in the coming decades.
ird, learn from India as its new public-private political economy of stability innovation emerges. e proliferation of privately-provided digital services is part of a new political economy of stability that is influenced and shaped by current technology and financial trends. It puts more power into the hands of individual citizens and firms as users, consumers, and buyers, and which replaces some public services with private ones, or enhances stability through a locally-appropriate mix. ere are parallel models emerging from Estonia, Peru, and India, but we focus on India given the sheer volume of innovation and the size and complexity its inclusive economy challenges. India’s experience building the India Stack—a set of “public good” platform technologies for identity verification, paperless transactions, and digital payments—to facilitate both publicly-provided social benefits and privately-provided services represents the most complete expression of this new model to date. Built by a team of public and private sector experts and with input from leading technologists, it simultaneously addresses identity, social protection, and financial inclusion. e open-source and open-data interchange system has already stimulated private actors such as Airtel to
launch a build a nationwide private payments bank in (Airtel Payments Bank), and, in , Dalberg and India’s iSPIRIT partnered with prominent investment funds to conduct the Build on India Stack Venture Pitch Competition to “unlock new business models or reach previously underserved new customer segments” leveraging the India Stack platforms. e competition drew submissions from early-stage businesses providing e-governance, healthcare, education, fintech, environment and agriculture services. is recent experience invokes what Bhatia and Bhabha call entrepreneurial inclusion—building digital ecosystems to promote social and economic inclusion that simultaneously facilitate entrepreneurial innovation without creating new private monopolies. It invites a deliberate re-thinking of assumptions about which services government can and should provide in each country context in light of both capacity and fiscal space, and about how to most effectively facilitate competition among private entrepreneurs to create products and services that support economic stability. Countries adopting or innovating cash transfers, for example, and the organizations that support them, should carefully consider whether they are using open technology and design protocols that encourage companies and entrepreneurs to “piggy back” privately-provided complementary services, and how to regulate these services. Operationally, this will require strategies for enabling deeper shared value creation for which no clear roadmap currently exists. is entails building better local agreements and protocols for mainstreaming privately-led innovation into national and local systems; improving the interface(s) for coordination and “power sharing” with entrepreneurs and innovators; creating and maintaining open-access data and information structures to ensure that innovation can build on government initiatives, and clear regulatory frameworks for protection of citizens, their data, and the public interest. is is certain to be challenging: even in India, there have been significant political and judicial challenges, and globally few governments agree on the appropriate role of privately-provided innovations in these domains. Nonetheless, many new and potentially transferrable lessons will emerge from India’s experience in meeting these challenges.
Fourth, global development actors can incorporate stability-enhancing innovation directly into their programming and support new pro-innovation arrangements in partner countries. Bilateral and multilateral donors seeking to support inclusive growth should continue to support innovation challenges, competitions, and impact investments to encourage innovators to apply their skills to pressing development problems. In fact, many innovations presented here originated from such processes. Beyond this, donors and global development actors should also consider how their programs—and the local systems they wish to strengthen—can more directly incorporate the services provided by innovative local and global entrepreneurs. e innovations presented here suggest the potential for more effective public-private partnerships in areas such as agricultural extension services, land titling, labor protection, and public safety, among others. Donors and other supporters can also help facilitate the co-creation process by which national governments and local stakeholders find a locally-appropriate balance of public and private initiatives that acknowledges the effectiveness of public-private solutions to key stability challenges. Environmental and economic resilience efforts, for example, should consider the roles and sustainability of
both public and proprietary technologies, as e Rockefeller Foundation has encouraged through its inventory of and support for Digital Technologies for Resilience (also implemented by FHI ). Where donors support development of legislation, policy, or programs, in areas relevant to economic stability, they can advocate for effective divisions of labor between public and private efforts, and attention to local innovation.
Finally, development partners should “layer” innovations into their interventions and adopt a modular mindset. Donors and local and international development partners should also explore how “layering” multiple innovations into program design and delivery can help meet shared development objectives. Because the economic and technological conditions of each intervention locale and target population is different, a unique combination of traditional capacity building and support for uptake of appropriate technologies is likely to be most effective. e “stacking” of services pioneered by the Government of India and, to some extent, in Peru, and the current experiments with building services infrastructure atop cash transfer systems, suggest high, if relatively untested, potential. ere is precedent for this approach from the world of commercial information technology systems, in which significant effort is spent diagnosing business problems and deciding which existing technology solutions to deploy and how best to integrate them. Typically, IT systems integration efforts select and implement modular software products that perform specific functions, concentrating efforts on integrating these solutions, and building new modules only where absolutely necessary. is layered approach maximizes the re-use value of innovations and significantly reduces custom software development costs. In global development contexts, the appropriate mix will be influenced by the availability of tools and innovations that are locally-appropriate or localization-ready, as well as by the digital enabling environment (digital and data services availability and access; telecommunications, energy, and financial infrastructure). But choices should principally be driven by the interaction of local challenges—land titling, financial exclusion, crime and violence—that impact stability at each level of the funnel. is is not an entirely new way to think about program design, but the emphasis on building programs around free-standing technologies that may not be owned or controlled by global development actors will require new entrepreneurialism and flexibility in programming and funding approaches. We can expect that innovations that support economic stability (and other development goals) will become more modular—better able to interconnect with emerging data sources and financial systems—requiring the global development community to also adopt a modular mindset in optimizing development programming.
Appendix Learn more about the innovations profiled in the Atlas
INNOVATION WEBSITE Small Enterprises, Unlimited
$ . Orodata (Nigeria) https://www.orodataviz.com/ $ $ . mSME Garage (Uganda) http://msmegarage.org/
Reg. . Sauti (Kenya) http://sautiafrica.org/ . DIYLaw (Nigeria) https://diylaw.ng/ . Commercial Courts http://judiciary.gov.lr/commercial-court/ for MSMEs (Liberia) . Human Centered Business Registration https://www.unglobalpulse.org/jakarta Improvement (Indonesia) . Government of IndonesiaBig Data https://www.unglobalpulse.org/jakarta (Indonesia) . USAID Jordan LENS (Jordan) http://jordanlens.org/
. Contract Enforcement for SMEs (Peru) https://goo.gl/YUEdsp
Stabilizing Jobs & Gigs . MicroBenefits (China) https://www.microbenefits.com/ . Burning Glass (USA) https://www.burningglass.com/ . Strategic Partnerships for Garment https://goo.gl/XFMa Supply Chain Transformation (Various) . RefugeesWork (Austria) https://www.refugeeswork.at/ . Pension Match (Peru) https://goo.gl/yaAv http://www.asociacionafp.com.pe/ . Alia (USA) https://www.myalia.org/ . Golden Dreams (SE Asia) https://www.issarainstitute.org/ . MobiVi (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, https://icarebenefits.com/ Indonesia) . Viridis Learning (USA) https://www.viridislearning.com/ . LaborLink (USA, China, Bangladesh) http://goodworldsolutions.org/laborlink/ . Workplace Options (USA, Indonesia, https://www.workplaceoptions.com/ Various)
INNOVATION WEBSITE Consumption Floors & Nets
$ mBANKING . Prospera (Mexico) https://www.gob.mx/prospera . Productive Safety Net (Ethiopia) https://www.wfp.org/content/protective-safety- net-programme-ethiopia . Gandhi Rural Employment Act (India) http://www.nrega.nic.in/netnrega/home.aspx . PKH (Indonesia) https://www.kemsos.go.id/program-keluarga- harapan . Universal Basic Income (Finland) http://www.kela.fi/web/en/basic-income- experiment-- . th Month Pay (Columbia, Chile, n/a Argentina, Meico) . ProSoli (Dominican Republic) http://progresandoconsolidaridad.gob.do/ . UNICEF: integrating innovation https://www.unicef.org (Global)
Inclusive Financialization
$ . MyAgro (Mali) https://www.myagro.org/ . Risk-Contingent Credit (Various: http://www.globalresiliencepartnership.org/ Kenya, India, South Asia, Africa) teams/ifpri-harnessing-power-tech/ . Wave Money (Myanmar) https://www.wavemoney.com.mm/ . Hello Tractor (Nigeria) https://www.hellotractor.com/ . MyWORTH (Tanzania) http://www.pactworld.org/worth-program . Modelo Peru (Peru) http://mibim.pe/ . Digit (USA) https://digit.co/ . Prism (USA) https://www.prismmoney.com/ . EVEN (USA) https://even.com/ . Yak Insurance (Nepal, India) http://ncf-india.org/projects/people-livestock- and-snow-leopards
Big Data Small Devices (Better Livelihoods) . WISE (Qualcomm + FHI ) https://www.fhi.org/projects/wireless- (Senegal) solutions-fisheries-senegal-wise . Twiga Foods (Kenya) http://twigafoods.com/#about . AgriFin/LISA (Indonesia) https://www.mercycorps.org/research-resources/ agri-fin-mobile . FarmDrive (Kenya) https://farmdrive.co.ke/ . Avaaj Otalo (India) https://hci.stanford.edu/research/voiceall/ . TCS Pride (India) https://www.tcs.com/
INNOVATION WEBSITE Collective Security . Fogo Cruzado (Brazil) https://fogocruzado.org.br/ . Onde Tem Teroteio (Brazil) http://ondetemtiroteio.com.br/ . DARU (Indonesia) http://labs.webfoundation.org/daru-firefighting- at-your-fingertips/ . Crash Detech/Usalama (South Africa) www.crashdetech.com . WatchMe (USA) http://www.watchme.com/ . Usalama (Kenya) www.usalamatechnology.com . Seguridad Inaámbrica (Qualcomm, https://www.qualcomm.com/company/wireless- USAID, and RTI) (El Salvador) reach/projects/wireless-security . My SafetiPin (India, Kenya, Indonesia, http://safetipin.com/ Philippines, Colombia)
Personhood & Rights . Transmit (PACT) (Cambodia) http://www.pactworld.org/country/cambodia
T PASSPOR . Land Law (Mozambique) n/a . Women’s Land Rights Sensitization www.idlo.int/news/highlights/strengthening (Burundi) -womens-customary-rights-land . Legal Aid (Haiti) https://goo.gl/vUhjr . Village Courts (Bangladesh) http://www.villagecourts.org . Cadasta (Various) http://cadasta.org/platform/ . DefeZap (Brazil) https://www.defezap.org.br/ . doctHERS (Pakistan) http://www.docthers.com/ . Making Cents International/Banqu http://www.makingcents.com/ (USA, Jordan) digitalidentitiesforrefugees . iRespond (USA, Southeast Asia) https://www.irespond.org/
India - Innovation Laboratory . LOOP (India) http://www.digitalgreen.org/loop/ . #PropertyForHer (India) https://www.facebook.com/PropertyForHer/ . MFIN Connect (India) http://mfinindia.org/ . Pradham Mantri Mudra Yojana http://www.mudra.org.in/ (PMMY) (India) . India Stack/DigiLocker (India) http://indiastack.org/; https://digilocker.gov.in/
Appendix Findings by Country Income Group
Stability-related needs and challenges vary widely across income contexts. High income (HI), upper-middle income (UMI), lower-middle income (LMI), and low income (LI) countries are in some cases converging and in other cases switching places, challenging established understandings of how to provide stability for citizens. Each context has a very different starting point for the innovation process, defining both the needs and opportunities.
% Innovation Low Income origins by country % income level Lower Middle Income
% Total Upper Middle Income Sample % High Income
% Both Low and Lower middle income
% High income serving mobile population
% % % % % %
Middle-income countries account for % of the innovations we profiled, but we also found numerous examples in both low and high-income countries. e figure presents the distribution by country income level.
High Income Countries | We found that the majority of high-income country stabilizing innovations, especially in the U.S., are technology-driven or enabled and largely aimed at more inclusive financialization, and adaptation of skills for employment to a new, more unstable economic reality. ese include notable innovations in financial services aimed at expanding credit, consumption smoothing and savings promotion, community investment, targeted education and data-informed skill development, and others, all to help individuals deal with insecure incomes and unstable gigs and jobs. Policy innovation, while badly needed, has been very limited. It is our view that innovations in the developed world, the US in particular, are just beginning to address economic destabilization.
Upper-Middle Income Countries (UMIs) | UMIs in general have a degree of public sector institutional capacity, and the stabilizing innovations we found reflected more public strategies, particularly throughout Latin America. Brazil and Mexico in particular are building more sophisticated financial inclusion infrastructures on the back of cash transfer systems, supported by digital identities and access to low-cost smartphones. While these begin with payments, they are expanding into savings, credit, finance, and other areas. ese cash transfer services function as government-funded consumption floors, typically provided to those far outside of stable employment, and represent perhaps the most important innovation of the century. Additional innovations related to cash transfers include promising financial education and microfinance lending in the Dominican Republic, as well as new public savings and pension schemes in Peru. Some UMIs share significant violence/public security issues with lower-income contexts, and innovative peer-to-peer and crowdsourced data solutions to help residents avoid street violence (collective security) have also arisen in Brazil’s urban areas, while Qualcomm supported police in real-time mapping of urban violence in El Salvador using mobile phone reporting. A pilot innovation in Peru is exploring alternate contract dispute resolution and enforcement to accelerate resolution of commercial disputes. Innovation from these middle-income contexts will inform the future of both higher- and lower-income economies and should be carefully observed.
Lower-Middle and Lower-Income Countries | What is most exciting about innovation in LMI and LI contexts, particularly those where subsistence agriculture and fisheries remain vitally important to livelihoods, is the extent to which mobile technology and big data and analytics are delivering financial services and information in ways that were not possible just a few years ago. e most common innovations we found in these contexts do not depend on the prevalence of formal employment relationships. Financialization and big data are being unlocked for own-account producers, especially subsistence and small-scale agricultural producers, supported by digital identities and basic rights and personhood in some cases, across Africa and Asia. Examples we present in the Atlas include the advent of micro-insurance products for nomadic yak herders in Nepal, India, and the Autonomous Region of Tibet (China), as well as risk-contingent insurance and credit products for African smallholders that deploy advanced meteorological data to determine payouts, making activities insurable that previously had far too much moral hazard. ere is also significant expansion of cash transfers in Indonesia, now a world leader in the field, providing a consumption floor and expanded social safety net in an incredibly complex national environment. Other innovations prevalent in low-income contexts substitute for or enhance stabilizing functions of governments—including basic personhood and rights—that governments do not effectively or evenly provide. ese are the preconditions or foundations of stability at the most basic level in terms of a sufficiently predictable contract enforcement and regulatory environment that enable individuals and businesses to make economic and investment decisions with confidence. Rapidly-developing lower-middle income countries with growing formal employment sectors, most notably Vietnam, and Indonesia, have also produced stabilizing innovations in privately-providing benefits commonly linked to employment. One of the most interesting innovations in this space relates to new technology-enabled services that help global brands monitor workplace conditions in their supplier firms, either through interactive voice response (IVR) or multi-channel mobile-based
applications. In this case, a promising new privatized form of workplace labor regulation is emerging. It is noteworthy due to () the central role of technology in facilitating both self-reporting by employees and () the alliance between brand-owners and workers that emerges as a risk-management imperative of financialization, since labor abuse can threaten brand-shareholder value. Most compelling is the way that India has incorporated the commercial technology sector into stabilizing policies and into the broader economic governance model as a whole (only Estonia and Peru are currently moving in parallel). While India’s technological prowess makes it somewhat unique among LI and LMI countries, India’s multi-front experiment with innovation for rural economic transformation is the closest we have found to a new public-private political economy of stability that is relevant to lower-income contexts with adequate technology endowments.
Appendix References
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. Robert Cull, Tilman Ehrbeck, and Nina Holle, “Financial Inclusion and Development: Recent Impact Evidence,” CGAP Focus Note, No. , April , https://www.cgap.org/sites/default/files/FocusNote-Financial-Inclusion-and-Development- April-.pdf
. World Economic Forum, “ e Inclusive Growth and Development Report ,” Insight Report, January , www.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Forum_IncGrwth_.pdf
. ibid.
. Valerio De Stefano, “ e rise of the ‘just-in-time workforce’: On-demand work, crowdwork and labour protection in the ‘gig-economy,’” Conditions of Work and Employment Series No. , International Labour Office, Inclusive Labour Markets, Labour Relations and Working Conditions Branch, International Labour Organization (ILO), Geneva, , http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp/groups/public/---ed_protect/---protrav/---travail/documents/ publication/wcms_.pdf
. Neil Abernathy and Rebecca Smith, “Work Benefits: Ensuring Economic Security in the st Century,” Roosevelt Institute and National Employment Law Project, January , , http://rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads///WorkBenefits_RooseveltNELP.pdf
. OECD COPE Program, “Understanding the Socio-economic Divide in Europe, Background Report,” January , , https://www.oecd.org/els/soc/cope-divide-europe--background-report.pdf
. Carl Frey, Michael Osborne and Craig Holmes, “Technology at Work v..,” Citi GPS: Global Perspectives & Solutions, Citi GPS and Oxford Martin School, January , https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/reports/Citi_GPS_Technology_Work_.pdf.
. UN Global Pulse Lab and GSMA, “ e State of Mobile Data for Social Good Report,” June , http://unglobalpulse.org/sites/default/files/MobileDataforSocialGoodReport_June.pdf
. GSMA, Mobile for Development webpage, accessed February , , https://www.gsma.com/mobilefordevelopment/
. Grace Dobush, “How Mobile Phones Are Changing the Developing World,” Consumer Technology Association, July , , https://www.cta.tech/News/Blog/Articles//July/How-Mobile-Phones-Are-Changing-the- Developing-Worl.aspx
. ibid.
. Deloitte Consulting, “What is the impact of mobile telephony on economic growth: A Report for the GSM Association,” November , https://www.gsma.com/publicpolicy/wp-content/uploads///gsma-deloitte-impact-mobile- telephony-economic-growth.pdf
. Richard Freeman, “It’s financialization!” International Labour Review, , :, -, citing Shiller, Robert J. , e new financial order: Risk in the st century, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press.
. Gerald A. Epstein, “Financialization and the World Economy,” United Kingdom, Edward Elgar Publishing, .
. Gerald F. Davis and Suntae Kim, “Financialization of the Economy,” Annual Review of Sociology :, -. . Ibid, citing Neil Fligstein and Adam Goldstein, “ e emergence of a finance culture in American households, -,” Socio-Economic Review, , :, -.
. Abhilash Mudaliar, Hannah Schiff, Rachel Bass and Hannah Dithrich, “Annual Impact Investor Survey ”, e Global Impact Investing Network, May , , https://thegiin.org/research/publication/annualsurvey
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. Nicholas Mathers and Rachel Slater, “Social protection and growth: Research synthesis,” Overseas Development Institute, May , http://www.social-protection.org/gimi/gess/RessourcePDF.action?ressource.ressourceId=
. Jonathan Tseun Yip Wong, Chief, Technology and Innovation, UN ESCAP, founding partner, Global Innovation Fund, Personal communication, February .
. Doblin is an innovation practice of Deloitte Digital within Deloitte Consulting LLP. See https://www.doblin.com/ten-types
. Many innovations support multiple stability-related objectives and draw upon similar technologies.
. Arvind Gupta & Philip Auserwald. “How India is Moving Towards a Digital-First Economy,” Harvard Business Review, November , .
. iSPIRIT Foundation, Annual Letter, .
. Amiya Bhatia and Jacqueline Bhabha, “India’s Aadhaar scheme and the promise of inclusive social protection,” Oxford Development Studies, , :, -.
. GSMA, “Aadhaar: Inclusive by Design, A Look at India’s National Identity Programme and its Role in the JAM Trinity,” March , https://www.gsma.com/mobilefordevelopment/wp-content/uploads///gsma-aadhaar- report-.pdf
. See http://www.buildonindiastack.in
. Uma Lele and Sambuddha Goswami, “ e fourth industrial revolution, agricultural and rural innovation, and implications for public policy and investments: A case of India,” Agricultural Economics, :S, -, November (b).
. Amiya Bhatia and Jacqueline Bhabha, “India’s Aadhaar scheme and the promise of inclusive social protection,” Oxford Development Studies, , :, -.
. Bidisha Chaudhuri and Lion König, “ e Aadhaar scheme: a cornerstone of a new citizenship regime in India?” Contemporary South Asia, :, DOI: ./..
. Phil Psilos and Otaviano Canuto, “New political economy of micro-stability,” Roubini Economonitor, February , https://www.economonitor.com/economonitor/emerging-markets/new-political-economy-of-micro- stability-TiBxaFiKDSXMnBPHA
. Paul Carttar, Director, Social Innovation Fund, Personal communication, February .
. Jonathan Tseun Yip Wong, Chief, Technology and Innovation, UN ESCAP, founding partner, Global Innovation Fund, Personal communication, February .
. Uma Lele and Sambuddha Goswami, “ e fourth industrial revolution, agricultural and rural innovation, and implications for public policy and investments: A case of India,” Agricultural Economics, :S, -, November (b).
. See http://www.buildonindiastack.in
. Amiya Bhatia and Jacqueline Bhabha, “India’s Aadhaar scheme and the promise of inclusive social protection,” Oxford Development Studies, , :, -.
Back to Innovations by Chapter 102 The Atlas of Innovation for Economic Stability About FHI : FHI is a nonprofit human development organization dedicated to improving lives in lasting ways by advancing integrated, locally driven solutions. Our staff includes experts in health, education, nutrition, environment, economic development, civil society, gender equality, youth, research, technology, communication and social marketing—creating a unique mix of capabilities to address today’s interrelated development challenges. FHI serves more than countries and all U.S. states and territories.
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104 The Atlas of Innovation for Economic Stability