UGANDA: Financial Literacy
SECTOR: Financial literacy, Cash-based assistance, Education/Training, Covid-19
Uganda is currently host to close to 1.4 million refugees across 13 settlements and Kampala. The WFP provides General Food Assistance to all refugees in Uganda in the form of both in-kind food assistance and cash-based transfers (CBT). Cash-based assistance is a modality for relief at the household level, considering its advantages in terms of respect for preventative measures for Covid-19 compared with in-kind relief distributions. Although cash-based assistance is not a new modality in Uganda, some refugees have never to date received their monthly food allocation in the form of cash transfers.
Financial literacy training is important for short-term sound use of cash-based transfers and longer-term for inclusive development, equitable empowerment, and financial inclusion. The Covid-19 pandemic presents new challenges on delivering training with safety restrictions which require limited human contact. In-person training puts the trainer and the community at risk of the disease spreading.
While numerous internet-based solutions exist to deliver learning, communities affected by the digital divide with limited access to internet or smartphone device ownership risk being left behind. For instance, the proportion of the population owning a phone in Uganda is 71% but this proportion drops to 43% among refugees.
Hence, Organizations like the UN’s World Food Programme looking to continue delivering training on financial literacy, are searching for innovation in process, method and/or technology to implement trainings with limited human contact under Covid-19 safety restriction.
A resource package researched by Response Innovation Labs, and United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), with solution provider consultations is now available to download here. The solution pack suggests how existing technologies like Interactive Voice Response (IVR), SMS-based learning, and narrow-casting can be leveraged to limit human contact.
Solutions respond to the following criteria:
Do No Harm it is necessary to respect social distancing and limit programmes bringing congregations of people (beneficiaries and staff), exposing them to the risks of Covid 19
Easy to use and low tech the solutions should take into account (literacy levels)
Post Covid 19 the solutions could be used to reach scale and increase inclusivity (language diversity, literacy levels) They could facilitate access to remote populations