Paper short abstract

We test whether an IVR narrative game builds “critical capabilities”—fraud-resistant judgment under urgency and ambiguity—among mobile money users in Uganda. A randomized trial with Viamo links survey outcomes to administrative complaints. We also discuss scale-up challenges with the regulator.

Paper long abstract

Digital markets demand judgment and autonomy in environments engineered to steer attention. The same tools that personalize finance and communication lower the cost of persuasion and, in adversarial hands, deception. This tension is acute in developing countries, where mobile money has driven financial inclusion while shifting risk onto consumers making high-urgency decisions on basic phones with limited recourse.

We argue that consumer protection in adversarial digital markets must build critical capabilities—the capacities that make consumers and citizens autonomous. Not generic “awareness,” these include trainable skills of discernment and action under pressure: distinguishing legitimate from deceptive contact, executing verification routines, and choosing protective responses (pause, verify, refuse, report). We test a scalable method to build these capabilities experimentally.

In partnership with Viamo, we evaluate a 20-minute interactive voice response (IVR) narrative game for mobile money users in Uganda. The intervention simulates scam scripts, prompts choices in real time, and provides immediate feedback to practice routines. IVR supports inclusion by reaching low-literacy users without smartphones through the same communication layer where scams arrive.

In a large randomized evaluation linking survey outcomes to administrative data, we find durable impacts nine months after exposure. Treated users report fewer fraud losses and stronger protective practices, and administrative records show increased complaints, consistent with greater consumer voice rather than higher fraud incidence. We also observe calibrated trust and sustained engagement with digital financial services. Ongoing work with Uganda’s communications regulator (UCC) explores scale-up, costs, and how to build consumer-protection infrastructure.

Paper short abstract

Based on fieldwork in Chhattisgarh, India, this paper shows how digitisation of welfare turns Anganwadi workers from caregivers into data labourers, intensifying surveillance, workload and precarity while redefining care as auditable, digital and data efficiency rather than social reproduction.

Paper long abstract

Aanganwadi workers (AWWs), the backbone of India’s child nutrition program - Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), are one of the largest groups of state-dependent, low-paid care workers in the country. This paper examines how digital governance and digitisation of their routine work has restructured the everyday rhythms of labour and livelihood for AWWs. The transformation of AWWs from caregivers to “digital footsoldiers” whose labour as data collector and uploader has been proving a basis for digital governance in India. Drawing on in-depth semi-structured interviews, and participant observation conducted in Bemetara and Bilaspur districts of Chhattisgarh, India between 2023–2024, the study demonstrates how digital tools such as the Poshan Tracker App, Matru Vandan App has converted care into surveilled, auditable data. Drawing on feminist scholarship on care, social reproduction and feminist STS literature, the study aims to bring how digitisation extends the managerial control of the state at the expense of redefining care as efficiency and data. Findings from the field shows that AWWs face significant challenges while doing their digital duties, like- lack of digital literacy, infrastructural challenges, and complex app interfaces. The paper argues that digitisation of welfare programs has further devalued the women’s care labour and has put the burden of delivery of welfare onto them. Digitisation has also intensified surveillance and control, with workers monitored through GPS, real-time dashboards, which increases anxiety among the workers. While the data is made visible in digital welfare systems, the labour that produces it, remains undervalued and precarious.

Paper short abstract

This paper examines Ghana’s digitalisation policies and their effect on women. This study finds that geographical location, educational background and socio-economic status results in only partial digitalisation which reflects access, knowledge and competency regarding using digital technology.

Paper long abstract

Digitalisation is described as able to empower women by enhancing their economic independence through flexible jobs, adaptable working hours, online entrepreneurship and financial inclusion while also expanding access to education, health, and information among others. Various governments in Ghana have therefore embarked on several digitalisation policy initiatives to make Ghana a digital economy so women can take advantage of the opportunities digitalisation offers to enhance equitable development. In this paper, I examine the extent to which these policy initiatives have been beneficial to women and other vulnerable groups in Ghanaian society. This paper relies on indepth interviews conducted in the Northern, Ashanti and Western regions of Ghana and pertinent literature and policies to assess the effects of digitalisation policies on Ghanaian women. Using the concept of domestic digital divide and intersectionality, I argue that there is a governmental disconnect and technological gap which inhibits rural, poor, uneducated and vulnerable women from accessing the full set of opportunities which digitalisation offers inspite of digitalisation policies. This study shows that one’s geographical location, educational background and socio-economic status determines level of access, knowledge of digitalisation policies and competency regarding using digital technology tools. I conclude that despite the existence of digitalisation policies and institutions tasked with implementation, the result is only partial digitalisation. There is a need for broader citizen centered consultation for effective policy implementation.