Government Mobile Salary Payments in Afghanistan

Governments must pay their employees for states to function. Frequent delays and leakage of salary payments can undermine government effectiveness. These problems are severe in Afghanistan. Mobile Salary Payments (MSPs)—a system enabling employees to receive their salaries directly via mobile money—present a potential solution. At scale, MSPs can also grow the mobile money ecosystem and promote financial inclusion. We propose a randomized evaluation of MSPs with the Ministry of Education for a sample of approximately 200,000 teachers spanning 340 of the 396 districts in Afghanistan. We also propose to evaluate an additional Call Detail Record (CDR)-based attendance monitoring system that will complement the MSPs.