We’ve blogged before about the growing role of mobile phones in economic development; now the phones will be used to deliver food aid as well. The World Food Program (WFP) recently announced that it will begin texting food vouchers to 1,000 Iraqi refugee families in Syria. The vouchers can be exchanged for rice, wheat flour, lentils, chickpeas, oil, canned fish, cheese, and eggs at certain stores. Emilia Casella, the WFP spokesperson, told reporters that all of the 130,000 Iraqi refugees in Syria receiving food aid already have mobile phones: “We’re currently providing news about distributions on mobile phone messages to the 130,000 caseload right now.” (HT: F.P. Passport)[%comments]
Phones But No Food
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So if someone texts me a food voucher, how exactly do I redeem it? How would I even verify it’s genuine?
I thought the same thing Terry. My guess is a unique confirmation code for each voucher. The hard part would be if multiple copies of the voucher were redeemed at multiple stores within a short amount of time. However, because each code would be unique, you would have a pretty good idea of who was involved in the scam, even if you couldn’t prevent the scam from happening.
-Kevin
Ha, I should actually read the article first shouldn’t I: “United Nations agency will send a 22-dollar (15-euro) voucher every two months by SMS to each family, who will be provided with a special SIM card.” So now the code idea still works, but it is stored on the SIM card, and probably encrypted.
how can they all afford cell phones but not rice and flour?
Most food stores in Syria aren’t equipped with the technology to deal with these kinds of vouchers, much less catch scams. It will be interesting to see how the program works out.
Mobile phones cost much less over there (or in most places). And there aren’t any contracts–pay as you go with. And SIM cards are interchangeable for almost all the phones (No Sprint!). And I know, for example, in Bangladesh probably the most well-developed infrastructure in the country is cellular telephones.
A lot of places also have (or are starting to implement) mobile banking systems since villagers won’t have a bank account or access to a physical bank.
I think these vouchers are perfect, but we’ll see how the execution of encrypted SIM cards/identification codes works.
It will be amusing if the solutions for all the world’s problems occur as IPhone apps.
Got famine? There’s an app for that!