Cash in the City: Emerging Lessons From Implementing Cash Transfers in Urban Africa

Poverty and crises are rapidly urbanizing. Yet experience with operationalizing cash transfers in urban areas is limited.

This paper captures early lessons from a new generation of urban cash transfer responses to COVID-19 in eleven African countries. The analysis contextualizes such initiatives within a longer-term trajectory of urban social protection programs from the early 2000s. A range of lessons emerge around design and implementation, partnerships, institutions and political economy, strategic issues, and evidence and learning.