DARTs

In 2024, WFP distributed a historic US$2.2 billion in cash assistance across 75 countries. However, challenges persist in ensuring all recipients receive funds. Such obstacles include limited digital infrastructure, low data literacy, and the diversity of systems and data used by partners. In many programs, when a person does not receive their assistance, they contact field staff who then manually search through Excel files or even paper records to identify the issue, often leading to delays and increasing the risk of the person losing their assistance.

When a person receives cash-based assistance from WFP, Data Assurance and Reconciliation Tool Simplified (DARTs) makes it easy to verify they received the right assistance at the right time. By standardizing and automating complex data analysis and transformations, web application DARTs enables WFP to implement controls on large cash transfer data, which is vital for WFP to guarantee accountability to its donors, increase programme efficiency and build trust across operations. Its advanced machine learning model ensures accurate, accountable cash transfer data and reconciliation.

In 2025, DARTs generated USD 1.1 million in cost efficiencies and ensured that 1.2 million people received the right amount of money at the right time, accurately and efficiently. 

So far, DARTs has ensured that 2.3 million people received the right amount of assistance at the right time, while assuring the accurate transfer of over USD 2.49 million and generating USD 1.4 million in cost efficiencies. The solution saved 3,000 hours in reconciliation processes, enabling WFP staff to redirect time to higher‑value operational and programmatic work. By 2025, DARTs had scaled to 14 countries, including Bangladesh, Benin, Colombia, Guinea, Haiti, Honduras, Kenya, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Myanmar, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Yemen, demonstrating rapid uptake in less than three years. DARTs continues to be actively used across multiple WFP country offices, with Benin, Kenya, Senegal and Gambia applying the tool regularly for reconciliations, Myanmar relying on it heavily across more than 20 cooperating partners per distribution cycle and renewed or growing adoption in Iran, Ethiopia, Guinea‑Bissau and Türkiye.

The solution is in the process of being developed into a global corporate tool, intending to be implemented in approximately 50 percent of our global cash-based transfers operations, spanning around 40 countries.