Billions of Transactions, Thousands of Photos: Combining Mobile Network Operator Data with Crowd-Sourced Photographs to Measure the Availability and Use of Digital Financial Services

Joshua Blumenstock of the University of Washington in the U.S. will combine data on mobile phone call details and mobile money use with photographs taken of local infrastructures such as electricity supply, to map access to and use of digital financial services in Ghana. They have access to vast anonymized datasets on phone and mobile money transactions in Ghana, and a technology platform developed by Premise that collects photographs and observations from local citizens to measure economic and social infrastructures. They will develop a method to combine these data and apply standard machine learning in order to measure access to digital financial services across the country.