Digital infrastructure priorities for scaling cash transfers toward ending extreme poverty

On November 12, 2024, the Center for Sustainable Development at Brookings partnered with Co-Develop to co-host a private roundtable exchanging insights on potential digital infrastructure design principles that could help support dramatic expansion of digital cash transfers (DCTs) toward ending extreme poverty over the coming decade.

The convening took place at the nexus of two intersecting policy dialogues. One relates to a recent proposal to create a new, global-scale, purpose-driven fund to support the global scale-up of DCTs to help end extreme poverty (Kharas and McArthur 2023, Lawson and Stewart 2024). Another relates to the fast-evolving notion of digital public infrastructure (DPI) as a specific approach to digital infrastructure that prioritizes a publicly managed or publicly governed country-level backbone for digital services (Eaves, Mazzucato, and Vasconcellos, 2024; Eaves and Sandman, 2024; Ingram, McArthur, and Vora 2022). The discussion brought together diverse forms of expertise to consider the role of DPI in national scale up of DCT programs in low-income settings.

The roundtable considered relevant issues in three parts:

1. Stocktaking around evidence for cash transfers and the status of country-level scale-up of DCTs targeting people in extreme poverty.
2. Identifying the priority digital infrastructure and policy preconditions for scaling DCTs targeting extremely poor people, and the relative importance of a “DPI approach.”
3. Considering next steps to advance more systematic global efforts to expand country-level DCT programs for people in extreme poverty.

A background note for the roundtable presented a preliminary analysis of DPI status in countries still grappling with extreme poverty. A revised version has subsequently been updated and published as a brief on the Brookings website: Assessing infrastructure readiness for scaling digital cash transfers toward ending poverty

A summary note of the roundtable is available below.