Alleviating poverty “a slow deliberative process of discovery – no miracle cure”

Esther Duflo, Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer won the Nobel Prize in Economics for their on-the-ground experiments on how best to alleviate poverty. This award recognizes their more than a quarter of a century’s work in showing how randomized control trials can help to alleviate poverty.

Esther Duflo  states that alleviating poverty, is “a slow deliberative process of discovery – no miracle cure.” 

The need for context, the fact that one size does not fit all, and the essential nature of detailed and deliberate communication and engagement is all part of this continual process of investigation.

Duflo’s TED Talk reiterates the importance of identifying the right problem. She provides a reminder for us to battle against our assumptions and best guesses and eliminate those things that, although part of the problem, are not in themselves the answer to making the biggest impact and creating the possibility of taking solutions to scale.  She nicely demonstrates how getting this right means we can really get change as well as value for money.

[International Institute for Environment and Development]

This entry was posted in Humanitarian Aid, International Cooperation, Uncategorized by Grant Montgomery.