Working with Financial Sector Deepening (FSD), a Kenyan Trust focusing on development of financial services for the poor, researchers will evaluate a trade credit product that uses a mobile network to increase the efficiency of loan origination and repayment.  In collaboration with FSD, a large supplier of non-perishable products (the Coca Cola Bottling Company (CCBC)), and a Kenyan bank (Equity Bank), researchers will conduct a randomized evaluation of the new trade credit product.

This technology has the potential to overcome two particular challenges.  First, by reducing the transactions costs of making repayments, new mobile technologies make it economically feasible to offer trade credit products requiring small, frequent repayments. Second, the centralized information system allows centralized monitoring of both credit and repayment histories.

CCBC uses 240 independently owned distributors to deliver its products to about 40,000 retail outlets in Kenya. These retailers typically make purchases (in cash) and take delivery of product once every few days, depending on expected demand and available cash on hand.  There is presently no pre-ordering of any sort in the supply chain, and no short-term credit. All payments are made in cash at or just prior to the time of delivery.

CCBC will automate their supply chain, enabling every case of product to be recorded and tracked at the retailer level.  A natural next step in the automation process is to integrate financial transactions.  This project takes advantage of this advance in supply chain automation to build in a trade credit product.  In particular, the tracking system will allow real-time monitoring of both cash and mobile phone-based transactions, and hence enable more efficient administration of credit contracts. Critically, the trade credit will be provided not by the independently owned distributors, but by Equity Bank via it’s in-house mobile banking platform. This is the feature that makes the trade credit product viable for a larger number of retailers.

The project will involve working with 1,200 retailer selling Coke products in and around Nairobi, Kenya. Of these, two thirds will receive the trade credit while one third will serve as a comparison group.  While all credits will be repayable to Equity Bank, the distributors of Coke products will be given explicit incentives to ensure repayment for half the retailers to whom the credit is offered.  The study will assess the commercial viability of the product, the role of distributors in administering it, and its impact on business development and employment creation.  If the intervention is profitable for lenders and borrowers, the project partners are keen to expand the credit product at a much larger scale and to other suppliers.

Despite optimistic views about fiscal decentralization in Mexico, local governments’ performance has remained poor. In 2008, for example, more than 80 percent of municipal governments’ resources were spent either on the bureaucracy or were unaccounted for. While elections should enable voters to discipline their mayors, a single-term limit is imposed on all elected officials in Mexico. Thus, the immediate fate of mayors is determined not by voters but by their political party. To reconcile the single-term limit with accountability, scholars have typically assumed that voters punish or reward the incumbent party for mayoral performance. However, there is little evidence that government performance impacts the subsequent election – previous work shows a strong entrenchment of incumbents from all political parties.

Further impeding voters’ ability to hold mayors accountable are widespread misconceptions about which public works and services municipal authorities are responsible for providing, as well as a lack of available information about the amount of money municipalities receive and how this money is spent. In an attempt to ensure greater municipal accountability, a 1999 constitutional reform established the Federal Auditor's Office (ASF). On a yearly basis, the ASF selects a sample of municipalities in each state to audit. The results of the audits are published in lengthy reports, which are made available online. Though public, these reports are rarely used by media or political parties in local campaigns because the release date of the reports is not aligned with the timing of elections.

Researchers sought to assess the effects of information dissemination on participation in the 2009 municipal and congressional elections in Mexico. Approximately one week before Election Day, flyers with different kinds of information on municipal spending were delivered to all households within the boundaries of treated voting precincts. The first group of precincts received information about municipalities' overall spending; the second group received information about distribution of resources to the poor; and the third group received information about irregular, unauthorized, or unaccounted for spending. All flyers included a subtle advocacy message suggesting that voters raise questions with their mayors about the use of public funds and prompted people to think about the level of governments that was in charge of the provision of public infrastructure services. In total, 150 electoral precincts were randomly assigned to each of the three interventions, for a total of 450 treated precincts and 1910 precincts in the comparison group.

Researchers gathered demographic characteristics from census data, and then collected electoral results for each precinct from the electoral institutes for each state. This information was complemented by a follow-up survey collected ten days after the election.

Information about overall spending: Disseminating information about overall spending levels had no statistical impact on voter turnout when the mayor spent less than 75 percent of available funds. However, it decreased the incumbent vote share by 0.6 percentage points. When mayors spent more than 75 percent of the funds, releasing this information let to an increase in turnout of 1.9 percentage points, but had no significant impact on vote share.

Information about spending on poor: Turnout among voters who received information about levels of spending allocated to poor areas increased by 2.4 percentage points, but only when mayors spent less than 75 percent of available funds on poor areas. Surprisingly, releasing this information had a similar impact on both incumbent and challengers' vote shares - an increase of 1.5 and 1 percentage points, respectively. When mayors allocated more than 75 percent of resources to poor areas, releasing the information had no impact on turnout or vote share.

Information about corruption: Information about high levels of corruption appears to have had a significant negative impact on voter turnover. Turnout among individuals that received information about corruption decreased by 1.10 percentage points, which represents a 2 percent decrease in turnout. While the effect of information about corruption on the incumbent vote share was insignificant, the effect on the challengers' vote share was negative. These results suggest that while flows of information are necessary, they may be insufficient to improve political accountability, since voters may respond to information by withdrawing from the political process.

The situation of children in Sierra Leone continues to be precarious as 27% of the 2.7 million children are identified as vulnerable, lacking the protection of a primary care giver. Formal structures for child protection exist within police stations and local Child Welfare Committees (CWCs), but capacity and community trust in such institutions’ efficacy are limited in many rural areas[1]. To reduce violence against children, existing social structures,most paramount, section, and village chiefs, are frequently leveraged to respond to reports of abuse and to mobilize local protective factors.

To respond to the resource constraints faced by formal child protection systems in Sierra Leone, the Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender, and Children’s’ Affairs (MSWGCA) is experimenting with a policy framework that explicitly links local chiefs and community members to the formal child protection sector.  This policy was articulated in a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed in 2010 by the MSWGCA, CWCs, and the Council of Paramount Chiefs. The MOU and focal person system are currently being implemented in Moyamba and Pujehun districts, with potential to expand the program nationwide.  The MOU creates a framework through which chiefs, MSWGCA, CWCs, and the Family Support Unit (FSU) of the Sierra Leone Police can collaborate to protect children. Village chiefs appoint a focal person for child welfare in a public meeting of village residents. Focal persons report cases of child abuse to chiefs and chiefs, with the assistance of focal persons, follow up with the formal child protection actors to ensure that cases of child abuse are addressed appropriately.

To help focal persons connect informal systems for child protection to the formal roles of the FSU and MSWGCA, UNICEF and other local child protection NGOs have developed a training program that introduces focal persons to general approaches to child protection, as well as to their roles and responsibilities under the MOU.  Despite the grounding of these trainings in both international best practices and local norms and understandings, key stakeholders have expressed concerns about whether one-time trainings will provide focal points with sufficient capacity to effectively serve as a link between communities, chiefs, and formal child protection systems.  At the same time, repeated trainings or sustained in-depth monitoring by international or national child protection agencies is not sustainable in the context of rural villages in Sierra Leone.

Mobile phones and SMS messaging provide one potential avenue for bridging the gap between the need for sustained support of focal points and the high costs of transportation in rural Sierra Leone.  To leverage the growing use of this technology in Sierra Leone, a consortium of non-profit, academic, government, and private-sector stakeholders have collaborated in developing the Child Protection Knowledge and Information Network (CPKIN).  CPKIN (pronounced as “See Pikin” or “See the Child” in Krio, a language spoken throughout the country) is a system that will be used to send focal persons automated text messages asking questions about the welfare of children in their village and prompting them to engage in discussions in their community to help answer these questions.  Focal persons will then be encouraged to send their answers back to the central CPKIN system using a free text message.  These text message questions and responses will be sent and received through a software program that makes it possible to manage, organize, and analyze high volumes of outgoing and incoming messages with a large list of recipients

There are several hypotheses underpinning the design of the CPKIN program. The first hypothesis is that the process of receiving questions, discussing the questions with community members, and sending answers will encourage focal persons to critically examine the situation of children in their communities and then to act with the resources available in their villages. A second hypothesis is that having a focal person who is active with respect to reporting abuses, taking proactive steps to improve the welfare of children, and engaging community members in discussions regarding children has the potential to cause dramatic shifts in community level knowledge, norms, and practices regarding child protection, which in turn may lead to greater connections between informal and formal child protection systems.

Given the novelty of the CPKIN system as a child protection intervention, it is necessary to assess the extent to which sending regular, open-ended text messages to village focal persons using this system can increase the capacity of focal points and their communities to proactively and reactively respond to local child protection issues. In particular, the effectiveness of CPKIN and the validity of the underlying hypotheses will be evaluated using a randomized evaluation in 140 villages in Moyamba and Pujehun districts. The randomization will occur at the village level, with the 70 villages randomly assigned to the CPKIN treatment, and the remaining 70 villages comprising the comparison group, in which there is no intervention. In treatment villages, the village focal person will receive a one-on-one training on the overall aims of CPKIN, how to receive and send CPKIN messages, and how to use CPKIN as a starting point for engaging their community members on issues concerning child protection.  Shortly after this training, focal persons will begin receiving regular CPKIN prompts.

Baseline and endline surveys regarding child protection and child welfare will be conducted before and after the six to eight month intervention in all 140 villages in order to assess the relative effectiveness of the CPKIN support system, with survey questions designed to elicit two kinds of information:

1.)    The capacity of key stakeholders (children, parents, focal persons, chiefs, FSU, and CWCs—where they exist) to identify and respond to child protection issues.

2.)    The protection and support for children within their communities, and their overall level of welfare (including the prevalence of both abuses and protective factors).

Results forthcoming.