PC World Technology Aid

Article

In this PC World/IDG News Service column, Ken Banks asks whether international aid could increasingly be delivered electronically as mobile banking spreads through the developing world, pointing to Kiva’s direct lender-to-borrower model and a UK Department for International Development pilot that gave cash payments, rather than food aid, to thousands of people in northern Malawi. He argues that electronic and cash-based aid can sometimes avoid the market-distorting and conflict-fuelling side effects of large-scale food aid shipments.