Esther Duflo speaking at Pop!Tech in 2009. Photo: kk + (flickr)

Ever wonder why some development projects succeed while others fail?

Esther Duflo and her colleagues at MIT’s Poverty Action Lab are working on the answer. Duflo is one of the newest recipients of the MacArthur Genius Grant because of her commitment to investigating what causes poverty to persist in some developing countries and what works to alleviate it.

She does this by setting up controlled field experiments in some of the poorest countries in Africa and South Asia. These experiments set out to prove how social and economic forces fuel the cycle of poverty in these areas. They also test how effective foreign aid projects are at lifting people out of poverty.

Duflo conducts her experiments using a method that mimics how drug companies conduct randomized medical trials. One group participates in a development project while the other does not. The differences between them are then measured to see if the project worked, and exactly how well.

Some of Duflo’s best known work is on HIV prevention in Kenya. Her research shows it’s more effective to teach girls specific ways to reduce their risk — like avoiding sexual relations with older men — than teaching basic medical facts about HIV and emphasizing abstinence as the best method of prevention. As she explains in her recent article for VoxEU.org, girls who were given risk-reduction information now use condoms more often, stay in school longer, and become pregnant less often.

“Economics is about the best way to allocate resources, and finding out what works is important to understanding how to allocate these resources,” Duflo told Philanthropy Action. Too few development strategies are vigorously tested. Proving what works can help.

(For more information on the Poverty Action Lab, check out Sarah Standish’s post "Researching Better Ways to End Poverty.")

Wadango has already distributed around 10,000 solar-powered lanterns. Photo: **Mary** (flickr)

In rural Kenya nearly everyone uses kerosene as their main source of power. For those living on less than $1 a day — as about half the population does — this expense takes away a significant portion of their income. Kerosene costs the average African family almost $100 a year, according to the blog White African. And that's why Evans Wadongo's goal of providing solar-powered lanterns to rural Kenyans is so admirable.

In fact, Evans Wadongo and his work with solar lanterns was featured in a recent "CNN Heroes" video. In the video, Wadongo shows how these simple lanterns can do much good for rural Kenyans.

Families with solar lanterns can now spend the money they used to spend on kerosene on necessities like food and medicine. The lanterns are also much better for studying at night. Kerosene lanterns smother kids in smoke and can be harsh on their eyes because the light they give off is so dim. Solar lanterns provide brighter light without all the pollution — giving both kids and the environment a brighter future.

Thanks to Wadongo and his nonprofit sponsor Sustainable Development for All-Kenya, 10,000 of these lanterns have been distributed to rural Kenyans for free. You can help out by clicking here and donating to Sustainable Development for All-Kenya. A $20 donation provides a solar lantern for a family in need.

Could Wall Street's bull charge for good? Photo: iHeylen (flickr)

If Wall Street's excesses contributed to the decline of the nation's economy, could the same profit-driven environment really spawn a new generation of do-gooders?

Absolutely, says Wall Street Journal columnist David Weidner, and it's a process that's already begun, exemplified by those who seek profit by selling to poorer consumers. (I wrote about this general trend for Global Envision in "Slashing Health Care Costs, and Slashing, and Slashing", "How to Irrigate on a Shoestring", and Selling to the Poor, On Terms They Can Afford".)

Such entrepreneurs may be guided by a social conscience when they choose the products to fund and invest in and they may be willing to wait a little bit longer to turn a profit, but profit is still the end goal. "This new breed of Wall Streeter has turned the maxim 'greed is good' into 'greed can do good,'" explains Weidner.

A paragon of this model is The Acumen Fund, a non-profit venture fund that invests in business and entrepreneurial solutions to poverty. Its projects include replacing kerosene lamps with the safer and more affordable LED lamps, and pay-per-use toilets in Kenya.

Heidi Krauel, The Acumen Fund's founder, goes further "This is one of the new faces of capitalism," she says. For those just beginning to enter the world economic system, this is certainly good news.

Samasource works with entrepreneurs in developing countries like Jon Grosier in Kenya. Photo: Appfrica (flickr)

Students around the world face a particular paradox these days: what's the good of an education if there's no work to be found afterward?

Samasource — a small non-governmental organization based in San Francisco, California — is hoping to change this. They are partnering with U.S. companies and connecting them with people looking for work in places like Kenya and Pakistan using a several different methods, among them crowd sourcing website called CrowdFlower through which workers are paid small amounts for tiny increments of work (such as a few cents for filling in one blank in a spreadsheet).

As Samasource tells it, it’s a win-win situation: the cheap labor allows U.S. firms to cut costs, while providing higher wages for their 500 or so beneficiaries than they would likely have earned otherwise. So far, Samasource has focused on work in developing countries like Kenya (where the organization works with Somali refugees), Zambia and Pakistan — but also plans to expand into Mississippi, the poorest state in the U.S., notes the web magazine Reality Sandwich.

In all cases, Samasource's efforts hinge on the idea that work — not handouts — is what changes lives. "When you look at what the developing world really needs, it's a connection to markets," says Janah on the blog "Boing Boing." Markets provide an outlet for skills like English and computer literacy that students around the world have worked hard to obtain, and a livelihood for those who can put them to use.

Add banking to the growing list of things your cell phone can do.

A September special report in the Economist took a look at the expanding use of mobile banking in Africa and explained how it could play a large part in improving personal financial stability in the region. In essence, here's how it works:

You take your cash to a mobile banking agent and tell the agent that you want to send money to a friend or family member. They credit your mobile banking account. Once the funds are available, you transfer money by sending a text message to whomever you want. The recipient then goes to his or her local agent to access the transferred money. People can even pay utilities or pay for cab rides with the service.

There is a strong correlation between the increase in a developing nation's cell phone use and it's rise in GDP, notes the World Bank. Mobile money offers similar effects on the individual level. A study by researchers at the University of Edinburgh found that users of the Kenyan mobile money service M-PESA have seen a 5 to 30 percent increase in their incomes since the service began in 2007.

One reason for this is the increased convenience that M-PESA offers. Like many men in Kenya, Nairobi resident David Omuchilili used to have to take time off from work and pay for travel costs to deliver money to his family, whose village is nearly 200 miles away. With M-PESA, he is now able to avoid the traveling and can be more available for work, as he explains to Business Week.

Mobile money transfers also offers a safer, more reliable way to send cash. Citizens without the means for traveling no longer have to take the risk of giving an envelope full of cash to a middleman — like a bus driver — and telling him where to deliver it. In the aftermath of the 2008 Kenyan election, M-Pesa was used to send money to those trapped by the rampant violence.

One thing is for certain. As mobile banking continues to grow in popularity and scale, users will find opportunities for better financial stability.

Plumpy’nut is frequently used by humanitarian agencies in emergency malnutrition situations. Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps

Humanitarian agencies have long been using protein and energy bars filled with nutrients and vitamins when responding to food emergencies. Though these "ready-to-use foods" are seen everywhere on grocery shelves in the West, they're often viewed as lifesavers when food crises strike the developing world.

BBC News recently highlighted the efforts of two British doctors, Steve Collins and Alistair Hallam, who saw the great results these easily accessible foods can have on malnourished populations. The doctors have taken the idea of ready-to-use foods even further with their company, Valid Nutrition, which manufactures foods supplemented with important nutrients found in meat and vegetables — foods most Africans can’t afford. While majority of emergency food packets contain high sugar concentrations and supplements that help in emergency relief areas, Valid Nutrition's products contain nutrients that are important in a person's daily diet and are sold at an affordable price. The company has opened manufacturing factories in various African countries, creating jobs for locals and helping the economy by using local crops.

Instead of only using these foods during emergency relief situations, the doctors want to help treat severe acute malnutrition, where a person's weight for height measurement is 70 percent below the median range due to food shortage and/or illness, according to the World Health Organization.

"The idea is to target people suffering from a less acute, but more widespread form of malnutrition that affects a staggering two billion people worldwide," reports BBC News.

Fortification of food for the developing world is not a new idea. Other companies such as Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, a Swiss nonprofit, has programs in various developing countries providing food for the poor. In fact, Gain is trying to put more market pressure on firms to “develop new, affordable nutritious foods by convincing business it is missing a vast untapped market.”

A man cooks over a wood-burning fire in Kibera. Over 1 million working poor live in Kibera, with few opportunities to make a comfortable living. Photo: Crissy Olson (flickr)

Even UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was surprised by the large number of people who greeted him in Kibera, the largest slum in Nairobi, Kenya. But his surprise quickly became concern when he was told so many young people came to see him because they couldn't find work.

Inspired to act, Ban donated $100,000 of his own money to a UN-sponsored program that helps unemployed youth acquire vocational skills like carpentry, masonry, electrical wiring, plumbing and management. It's called the Youth Empowerment Program (YEP).

Students learn their trade through hands-on activities as they build a training facility that will allow YEP to expand its participant ranks. After graduation, many of the youth are placed in jobs or apprenticeships with private companies or UN-sponsored construction projects in Kibera.

The training program is part of a greater state- and UN-sponsored initiative to upgrade services and infrastructure in Nairobi's slums. Youth skills training also complements another UN-funded effort, the Urban Entrepreneurship Program, that helps to establish construction collectives and aid them in bidding on contracts.

Linus Sijenji, a youth coordinator in Kibera, notes that the combined efforts of the two programs are inspiring the youth and have opened up opportunities for them.

Our aim is to form our own companies that could competitively bid for such contracts on equal level with big companies. Much as this might seem far fetched, the idea is viable, especially with more training opportunities and resources like bank loans.

If these programs work as advertised, Ban will get an even bigger reception next time he comes to Kibera.

Kenya is looking to the jatropha tree as a way of reducing the country’s dependence on imported fossil fuels and developing a biofuel industry.

A clean-burning oil can be extracted from the jatropha tree's seeds, which can be immediately used to power generators or be refined into biodiesel. The trees can grow even in the driest and most nutrient-depleted soils, so it doesn’t have to take up arable land needed to grow food.

Faith Odongo, a senior official at Kenya's Ministry of Energy, says that about 5,000 hectares of land are being set aside for cultivation and expects that the plant could help the country “reduce fossil fuel imports by 5 percent in the next four years” and give farmers a viable crop to grow.

Whether jatropha is a viable alternative to fossil fuels is debatable. But Continental Airlines powered a Boeing 737 for a two-hour test flight on jatropha oil mixed with algae and aviation fluid. The Los Angeles Times calls jatropha one of the "new generation of so-called sustainable biofuels that could help airlines cut fuel costs and reduce carbon emissions."

But there are drawbacks. One tree only produces two liters of fuel and the trees don't reach full maturity for four to five years.

Yet these drawbacks haven't stopped countries like India, which has set aside 100 million acres for jatropha trees and expects to use the yielded oil to "account for 20 percent of its diesel consumption by 2011," according to Time.

In this video, Al Jazeera's Yvonne Ndege explains how farmers in eastern Kenya are seeing their economic situation improve as a result of planting jatropha trees.

As the world's euphoria following Barack Obama's election fades (watch VOA's Africa coverage above), what can Africa expect from America's first African-American president — especially when it comes to issues of global poverty?

Many Africans are hopeful that Obama will work to vigorously tackle poverty and disease throughout Africa. Former South African President Nelson Mandela echoed those sentiments in a note of congratulations to President-Elect Obama: "We trust that you will also make it the mission of your presidency to combat the scourge of poverty and disease everywhere."

Are those hopes well-founded? Perhaps. President-elect Obama was a key sponsor of The Global Poverty Act which seeks to cut global poverty in half by 2015. After its passage in February of this year, Obama stated:

With billions of people living on just dollars a day around the world, global poverty remains one of the greatest challenges and tragedies the international community faces. It must be a priority of American foreign policy to commit to eliminating extreme poverty and ensuring every child has food, shelter, and clean drinking water. As we strive to rebuild America's standing in the world, this important bill will demonstrate our promise and commitment to those in the developing world.

Some humanitarian agencies, like World Vision, are already strongly urging President-Elect Obama presidency to increase foreign assistance, food aid in order to meet the UN Millennium Development Goals.

But will the current global economic crisis limit these commitments to poverty alleviation? During the Vice Presidential debate, Vice President-elect Joe Biden admitted that given the current state of the economy an Obama administration may need to "slow down" their previous commitment to doubling foreign assistance.

Obama isn't talking about poverty alleviation nowadays. He (and everyone else) is focused on the U.S. economy. So despite the world's hopeful outlook, it's still unclear how Africa — and its poor — will benefit from America's first African-American president.

Over a million people live in Kibera. Photo: Chrissy Olson (flickr)

Trash dumps are being turned into organic gardens in a notorious Nairobi slum.

Youth in Kandimiru, a village within Kibera — known as Africa's biggest urban slum — are growing and selling produce on the former rubbish heaps, potentially easing the food crisis acutely felt by Africa's poor.

The science-fiction site I09 features photos of the transformation, calling it "the future of urban agriculture." It could also be the future of Kibera’s youth: "Most of the members were criminals who have chosen to reform," Mohammed Abdullahi, an official with the Kibera Youth Initiative for Community Development, tells IRIN news.

There are other indicators of change in the Kenyan slum, where vigilante groups rather than police patrol the streets. The Associated Press reports that some residents of Kibera "have helped construct a network of public latrines that recycle human waste into gas for cooking and light" and others, with the help of a Swiss aid organization, "use sunlight to purify drinking water, dramatically slashing cases of waterborne disease."

The most futuristic advance that could arise in Kibera involves using the methane gas from toilets to power people's homes. According to the AP, "Residents pay three cents to use one of eight drop toilets installed around a buried tank. The waste goes into an airtight 'biodigester,' where methane gas filters into an upper tank. The gas can be used to light stoves, turn on lamps, or heat water, although it is not yet pumped to individual homes."

Now that would make news on I09.

Photo: greenhem (flickr)

Plastic bags have long been associated with litter and waste. The world uses tens of billions of plastic bags every year – bags that end up hanging from trees, traveling along freeways, escaping garbage cans and waste dumps.

Plastic-bag recycling rates are extremely low – about 1 to 3 percent worldwide, according to Reusablebags.com.

While plastics have helped us in many ways – medical advances, for one – by now we are seeing an increasing amount of wasteful uses. The mass production and ubiquitousness of plastic bags has hit a nerve in many developing countries. Lawmaking bodies in every region of the world have begun to regulate the use of plastics — and some are even banning the use of plastic bags outright.

Here's a partial list:

India. In August 2005, the state of Maharashtra initiated a bag ban after bags "blocked sewage and drainage systems during record monsoon rains," according to The Guardian. "Flooding and landslides killed more than 1,000 people in the state.” Anyone seen with a plastic bag can be fined 1,000 rupees, or about $25.

Kenya. The East African nation has enforced new regulations banning production and distribution of light-density bags, according to Nairobi's Business Daily (as reported by allAfrica.com). Three years ago, Kenyan researchers had appealed for a ban, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai had argued that plastic bags can lead to malaria, because discarded bags left outside can fill with rainwater and breed disease-carrying mosquitoes.

Uganda and Tanzania. Kenya's neighbors also banned the use of all disposable one-use plastic bags nationwide. One Ugandan blogger wrote that “This seemingly radical step has a direct connection to human health and also to environmental well-being of citizens across Africa. Apart from the fossil fuel usage needed in their production, plastic bags have a remarkable ability to pollute across borders.”

China. Authorities announced that by this June, one-use plastic bags will be outlawed in the hope that residents will return to their old habit of using cloth bags and baskets. "Beijing residents appeared to take the ban in stride, reflecting rising environmental consciousness and concern over skyrocketing oil prices," reports National Geographic.

Some developed nations also have taken drastic steps to reduce the impact of plastics. Ireland, for example, imposed a 33-cent tax in 2002. It worked quickly to depress demand. According to the New York Times, the use of plastic bags dropped 94 percent within weeks.

I know that most everybody is tired of reality television by now. But a new documentary from Kenya that touts itself as "Apprentice meets Big Brother" is definitely worth watching.

Out of 5,000 applicants, the documentary follows six young Kenyans creating business plans in order to win prize money needed to launch their ideas.

Who competed? A young woman who wants to begin a translation service catering to visiting Chinese business people. An outspoken and confident young man, Oscar, wants to start an IT business.

What's most interesting about this film is that the filmmaker returns to these peoples' lives to discover that many of their entrepreneurial aspirations haven't gone anywhere because of the recent post-election violence. Who needs translation services when all international conferences have been canceled? Who needs hotel rooms or safaris when tourism has dropped by 90 percent? Even the plans of the young man who wanted to start a dairy co-op have been halted.

These are the stories that demonstrate that violent conflict has wider effects than claiming lives and destroying homes-- it has the potential to limit the entrepreneurial dreams of Kenya's best and brightest.

This week a correspondent from the Economist has an online diary about his experience in Kenya. This is a compelling, tangible way to gain insight on the political turmoil and how it is affecting the people of Kenya.

As tensions continue to run high, Mercy Corps warns that further chaos and violence in Kenya, long a bastion of regional stability, could push neighboring East African countries toward new humanitarian crises.

Our colleague Matt Lovick states, "historically, Kenya has been the hub that allowed goods and assistance to reach these land-locked, war-torn places," said Matt Lovick, Mercy Corps’ Nairobi-based East Africa regional program director. "Its importance in fostering and maintaining stability in this region cannot be underestimated."

If hostilities escalate in Kenya, neighboring economies could suffer immediately from a shortage of critical resources. Markets, planting seasons and access to food could all be severely disrupted, increasing the risks for communities already on the brink of disaster.

Check out the latest update from IRIN News Agency.

Wangari Maathai is the 2004 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, and founder of the Greenbelt Movement. She has spent her life as an activist promoting women’s rights, civil society and environmental protection. The international arm of the Greenbelt Movement focuses on empowering African women and girls, especially nurturing their leadership and entrepreneurial skills.

Ms. Maathi has said that ‘‘Africa is not poor. But the people of Africa are poor. They do not have the skills to use the resources they have in abundance. There can be no development in Africa if the continent does not use its resources effectively.''
In this short film, Ms. Maathai discusses the value of human rights and politics in creating a just society.