Development Channel

Over the past decade, technology has begun to revolutionize industries ranging from education and healthcare to financial services and commerce. These transformations are not limited to the developed world – in emerging economies rapid mobile technology proliferation and internet penetration have had profound and unforeseen effects, including expanding financial inclusion through mobile banking services and facilitating employment through online and mobile job platforms. These changes are just the start. Technology can be a powerful tool for neutralizing many of the challenges to emerging countries’ efforts to alleviate poverty, improve quality of life, and expand economic opportunities. Infrastructure failings, including poor road networks, inadequate power grids, and limited internet connectivity, often leave vulnerable communities outside major cities isolated. Low state capacity and finite state resources undermine efforts to administer social programs or deliver basic public services. Even identifying target populations can be difficult, as many never receive a birth certificate, a government ID, or other sort of official recognition. It is here where some organizations and public institutions are leveraging technology. One such example, written about extensively by my former colleague Isobel Coleman, is GiveDirectly, a philanthropic organization that leverages satellite imagery and mobile payment systems to identify poor beneficiaries in Kenya and Uganda and to send them cash transfers digitally. Last week, I hosted a CFR meeting on harnessing technology in the service of development with Michael Faye, GiveDirectly cofounder, and Tariq Malik, former chairman of the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) in Pakistan and a leading expert on applying technology to development issues. Faye discussed his new company Segovia Technology, which designs engineering platforms to address last-mile challenges of delivering services and goods to citizens in developing countries. With global spending on social cash transfers to unbanked populations totaling a half trillion every year, a World Economic Forum report estimates leakage rates for these programs range from 5 to 25 percent. This translates into $25 to $150 billion in benefits lost due to misidentification, misdirection, or fraud. The same report estimates that migrating government payments, including cash transfers, onto a digital platform could save as much as $46 billion per year. Malik’s experience with NADRA in Pakistan speaks to the broader promise of integrating technology into government. NADRA’s biometrically enabled identification systems, widely issued smart identification cards, and direct payment systems have helped the Pakistani government improve its social programs. The state successfully used NADRA technology to administer disaster relief to 20 million citizens after a devastating flood in 2010 and to enroll poor women in a national financial assistance scheme. NADRA’s digital system has provided powerful tools for exposing fraud and corruption, and enabling greater accountability, better ensuring that target beneficiaries in Pakistan receive their social aid intact. Still the benefits – in terms of efficiency and transparency – create potential adversaries in those that gain from opacity and leakages. Both speakers alluded to these potential challenges to the transformative use of technologies employed by NADRA and Segovia. Malik and Faye’s work digitizing social programs are examples of creating sophisticated solutions to development challenges, and reflect the broad opportunities for governments, nonprofits, and donor agencies to think outside the usual development toolbox to make progress on poverty alleviation, inclusive growth, and greater economic prosperity.

As Pakistan continues to reel from December’s horrific school attack, its government has initiated a crackdown on terror across the nation and instituted new security measures at schools. Last week, the Army Public School in Peshawar—site of the massacre that left over 150 dead—was reopened to students. Secretary of State John Kerry’s Pakistan visit happened to coincide with the school’s reopening. Yet Kerry’s visit was mainly geared toward reinforcing U.S. support for counterterrorism operations in Pakistan. While Kerry’s visit to Pakistan and support of the U.S.-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue are laudable, critics have called for stronger rhetoric on Pakistani human rights. Many of the government’s actions—including, for example, the reinstitution of the death penalty and the use of military trials for terrorist suspects—have drawn criticism from international human rights organizations. Yet there is another equally troubling facet of Pakistan’s policy response to the December 16 attack: the fact that schools that do not meet the onerous new school security requirements—which include barbed wire, security guards, and surveillance cameras—were not permitted to reopen. According to the New York Times, only 118 of the 1,380 private schools in Peshawar met the new guidelines, and police in Islamabad prevented some schools from reopening last week. Security of students and teachers is, of course, critical. But the closing of schools should only be a temporary measure in Pakistan. Keeping children out of school can have debilitating effects on the country’s economy, stability, and security in the long term. Children without access to education are more likely to face limited economic opportunities in the future, and lack of economic opportunity is a primary factor in environments that foster extremism. Yet it is natural for parents to fear for their children at school in the wake of December 16, and Pakistan should address those fears more quickly to ensure that children can return to school safely. If such safety standards are not met, parents may see keeping their children—especially girls—out of school as the only way to protect them. Pakistan, the United States, and Pakistan’s other allies might consider the steps Afghanistan has taken to protect students as a model for Pakistan’s future. In the summer of 2010, the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a resolution addressing the attacks on Afghan school children and calling on other countries to support Afghanistan in combatting these attacks. Then-Afghan President Hamid Karzai introduced a steering committee, consisting of representatives from across Afghanistan’s ministries, to coordinate the government’s response to attacks on children. John Kerry and his Pakistani counterparts announced the launch of a new working group for the Strategic Dialogue: a working group on education, science, and technology. This creates an opening for the United States to offer more robust support for Pakistan’s efforts to improve security at schools, while not sacrificing access to these schools. It is understandable that parents and governments want to care for their children and prevent any such terrorist attack from ever happening again. Yet keeping schools closed is not the answer. By mobilizing resources from across government ministries, Pakistan should work to bring schools up to the appropriate security standards swiftly, thus returning children to school and ensuring a future of prosperity, stability, and opportunities for children to reach for their dreams and fullest potential.