Chain Reaction: How Does Blockchain Fit, if at All, into Assessments of Value for Money of Education Projects?
by Cathy Richards
In this panel, “Chain Reaction: How does blockchain fit, if at all, into assessments of value for money of education projects,” hosted by Christine Harris-Van Keuren of Salt Analytics, panelists gave examples of how they’ve used blockchain to store activity and outcomes data and to track the flow of finances. Valentine Gandhi from The Development Café served as the discussant.
Value for money analysis (or benefit-cost analysis, cost-economy, cost-effectiveness, cost-efficiency, or cost-feasibility) is defined as an evaluation of the best use of scarce resources to achieve a desired outcome. In this panel, participants examined the value for money of blockchain by taking on an aspect of an adapted value-for-money framework. The framework takes into account resources, activities, outputs, and outcomes. Panel members were specifically asked to explain what they gained and lost by using blockchain as well as whether they had to use blockchain at all.
Ben Joakim is the founder and CEO of Disberse, a new financial institution built on distributed ledger technology. Disberse aims to ensure greater privacy and security for the aid sector — which serves some of the most vulnerable communities in the world. Joakim notes that in the aid sector, traditional banks are often slow and expensive, which can be detrimental during a humanitarian crisis. In addition, traditional banks can lack transparency, which increases the potential for the mismanagement and misappropriation of funds. Disberse works to tackle those problems by creating a financial institution that is not only efficient but also transparent and decentralised, thus allowing for greater impact with available resources. Additionally, Disberse allows for multi-currency accounts, foreign currency exchanges, instant fund transfers, end-to-end traceability, donation capabilities, regulatory compliance, and cash transfer systems. Since inception, Disberse has delivered pilots in several countries including Swaziland, Rwanda, Ukraine, and Australia.
David Mikhail of UNCDF discussed the organization’s usage of blockchain technologies in the Nepal remittance corridor. In 2017 alone, Nepal received $6.9 billion in remittances. These funds are responsible for 28.4% of the country’s GDP. One of the main challenges for Nepali migrant families is a lack of financial inclusion characterized by credit interest rates as high as 30%, lack of a documented credit history, and lack of sufficient collateral. Secondarily, families have a difficult time building capital once they migrate. Between the high costs of migration, high-interest rate loans, non-stimulative spending that impacts their ability to save and invest, and lack of credit history make it difficult for migrants to break free of the poverty cycle. Due to this, the organization asked itself whether it could create a new credit product tied to remittances to provide capital and fuel domestic economic development. In theory, this solution would drive financial inclusion by channeling remittances through the formal sector. The product would not only leverage blockchain in order to create a documented credit history, but it would also direct the flow of remittances into short and long-term savings or credit products that would help migrants generate income and assets.
Tara Vassefi presented on her experience at Truepic, a photo and video verification platform that aims to foster a healthy civil society by pushing back against disinformation. They do this by bolstering the value of authentic photos through the use of verified pixel data from the time of capture and through the independent verification of time and location metadata. Hashed references to time, date, location and exact pixelation are stored on the blockchain. The benefits of using this technology are that the data is immutable and it adds a layer of privacy and security to media. The downsides include marginal costs and the general availability of other technologies. Truepic has been used for monitoring and evaluation purposes in Syria, Jordan, Uganda, China, and Latin America to remotely monitor government activities and provide increased oversight at a lower cost. They’ve found that this human-centric approach, which embeds technology into existing systems, can close the trust gap currently found in society.