Targeting mobile money cash transfers for emergency relief using Call Detail Records in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)

Introduction

Armed conflicts and instability in the DRC often cause large-scale internal displacement, including in remote areas where identifying and targeting internally displaced persons (IDPs) by field operations is slow, costly, and geographically limited.

To address these challenges, Flowminder has developed a novel targeting method using daily anonymised statistics derived from Call Detail Records (CDR) to detect displacements in near real-time. Together with GiveDirectly and a mobile network operator (MNO), we created and operated a live CDR-driven cash transfer pipeline based on this novel targeting method, as a pilot project in the provinces of North and South Kivu (DRC).

The targeting pipeline was repeated for 8 armed attacks within 5 months, reaching over 5,600 displaced subscribers in total. Crucially, the method and pipeline dramatically improved response times: after the first attack, 490 displaced people received $125 each within 7 days, compared to the typical 100–130 day delays of traditional aid.

Our CDR-driven remote cash transfer programming pipeline is currently operational to respond to ongoing displacement events in the North-East of the DRC, enabling rapid and targeted humanitarian cash transfers when and where needed.

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This abstract was accepted and presented at Netmob 2025.

NetMob is the primary conference on the analysis of mobile phone datasets in social, urban, societal and industrial problems.