Twaweza is collecting data on citizens’ knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) related to COVID-19. This will be done through a series of mobile phone surveys of a representative sample of the country’s adult population.
Twaweza is collecting data on citizens’ knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP) related to COVID-19. This will be done through a series of mobile phone surveys of a representative sample of the country’s adult population.
Social distancing is one of the most important health behaviors limiting the spread of COVID‐19, but people may practice it insufficiently for multiple reasons: they may not believe or realize that community norms have shifted towards support for social distancing, and they may not realize its public health benefits. This project is supporting Mozambique’s effort to promote social distancing, in collaboration with the government’s health research center for the central region.
Population Council is implementing a rapid COVID-19 Knowledge, Attitude and Practice assessment of a representative sample of girls living in the catchment area of two skills-building programs.
As the onslaught of COVID-19 is expected to worsen in the coming weeks and months in Bangladesh, the citizenry is taking preparations in various capacities. However, as everything is happening very fast, there has not been enough time to mobilize resources, and one key gap is observed in the area of targeted, customised communications that takes into account local realities and customs.
In Colombia, adults older than 70 have been in mandatory home quarantine since March 20th. These restrictions have made it difficult for this vulnerable population to access and use public services, such as their pension. Even though the public pension provider, Colpensiones, had an online platform to conduct transactions remotely prior to the crisis, enrollment was low, and many elderly pension holders preferred to carry these transactions in person.
Effective responses to COVID-19 depend on citizens cooperating with the government in the lockdown, testing and treatment regimes. With multiple cases of defiance against the government-imposed restrictions on travel and mass gatherings in the earlier stages of the COVID-19 crisis in Bangladesh, ensuring citizen cooperation has continued to pose a huge challenge.
As coronavirus begins to spread in developing countries, an important question is whether poor households will adhere to social distancing given the likely inability to work remotely, and the subsequent large income losses. In such a context, mobile money transfers may not only help households maintain consumption levels, they may also complement social distancing policies - those that get the cash may work less, and stay at home more.
This study will deliver cash grants to female microenterprise owners in Dandora, Kenya during the COVID-19 outbreak. Researchers are conducting a randomized controlled trial to study the impact of unconditional cash transfers on economic outcomes both during and after the crisis. The research team will collect information about expectations, beliefs, and impact of any potential government policy responses on business outcomes.
In order to limit the spread of COVID-19, governments in Latin America have adopted measures to increase social distancing, including closing schools and limiting mobility. Ministries of Education in the region have transitioned to distance education programs, with caregivers playing a key role in accompanying the learning process at home. However, parents may lack the knowledge and skills to provide an effective support to their children.
This project is collecting data on individuals, families, and firms through two types of phone surveys. The first type will collect high priority data from a nationwide sample via random digit dialing. The second type follows up with more in-depth phone-based interviews.
Research has shown that engaging local actors in the monitoring of public services can improve outcomes across multiple sectors, and in the case of the Ebola epidemic, a community monitoring intervention was able to significantly improve response to the crisis. For the past 6 years, Elevate: Partners in Education has been implementing a school scorecard intervention in Ugandan primary schools in which local actors are trained to monitor issues at their school.
Sub-Saharan Africa contains many densely overcrowded and poor urban slums at high risk of COVID-19 outbreaks. In these contexts, sanitation and social distancing measures are near impossible, and COVID-19’s rapid spread is a devastating prospect. To control the pandemic’s spread, the Kenyan Ministry of Health COVID-19 Taskforce has implemented initial prevention and mitigation measures.
We plan to do three things. First, by collecting novel data using phone surveys we will document both the extent of (self-reported) incidence of COVID-19 and the extent to which respondents adjust their health seeking behavior in response to the pandemic. This will allow us to estimate a more comprehensive measure of the impact of COVID-19 pandemic in rural Africa that embraces morbidity and mortality from all conditions.
In this project, researchers are conducting a field experiment with female entrepreneurs who have borrowed from a microfinance organization in Punjab, Pakistan. They test whether an intervention that exposes women to successful role models, and encourages goal setting, planning and the overcoming of obstacles can foster investments in female businesses.
The InterMedia Financial Inclusion Insights Surveys have consistently shown Uganda to have the highest levels of consumer fraud in mobile money amongst countries surveyed in Africa and Asia. These surveys have also documented insufficient consumer use of formal complaints channels.
We will conduct a survey of digital finance users—active and dormant— across Nigeria. The survey will cover active and dormant users of electronic payments products, mobile banking products, agent banking, and digital credit. Users of these products will be queried on key consumer protection topics including: Pricing transparency; Fraud; Experiences at agent locations; Complaints handling and redress.
According to the 2019 FinAccess survey, 8.4 percent of mobile money users in Kenya report having lost funds on their mobile money accounts—and 70 percent of these cases were due to third-party phone or SMS fraud. Yet no one has unpacked why certain consumers suffer from fraud, nor why they often don’t use formal complaints channels when they suffer loss of funds or fraud.
The lockdown in South Asia has led to mass migration of people back to their home towns/villages as the work opportunities in urban centres shrink or are no longer available. This poses a public health risk to rural areas as migrants may spread the virus when they return and these areas are ill-prepared to handle the crisis due to poor healthcare infrastructure.
COVID-19 has disrupted education systems around the world, pushing the majority of children temporarily out of school. With close to 40 million children enrolled in school, Bangladesh is among the countries most affected by a complete shutdown. With all schools closed for a period of at least two months, the immediate challenge for the policymakers therefore is safeguarding learning time and well-being while children remain out of school.
