The End of Poverty

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Such theories justified brutal forms of exploitation of the poor during colonial rule, and they persist even today among those who lack an understanding of what happened and is still happening in the Third World. In fact, the failure of the Third World to grow as rapidly as the First World is the result of a complex mix of factors, some geographical, some historical and some political. Imperial rule often left the conquered regions bereft of education, health care, indigenous political leadership and adequate physical infrastructure. Often, newly independent countries in the post--World War II period made disastrous political choices, such as socialist economic models or a drive for self-sufficiency behind inefficient trade barriers. But perhaps most pertinent today, many regions that got left furthest behind have faced special obstacles and hardships: diseases such as malaria, drought-prone climates in locations not suitable for irrigation, extreme isolation in mountains and landlocked regions, an absence of energy resources such as coal, gas and oil, and other liabilities that have kept these areas outside of the mainstream of global economic growth. Countries ranging from Bolivia to Malawi to Afghanistan face challenges almost unknown in the rich world, challenges that are at first harrowing to contemplate, but on second thought encouraging in the sense that they also lend themselves to practical solutions.

In the past quarter-century, when poor countries have pleaded with the rich world for help, they have been sent to the world money doctor, the International Monetary Fund. For a quarter-century, and changing only very recently, the main IMF prescription has been budgetary belt-tightening for patients much too poor to own belts. IMF-led austerity has frequently resulted in riots, coups and the collapse of public services. Finally, however, that approach is beginning to change.

It has taken me 20 years to understand what good development economics should be, and I am still learning. In my role as director of the U.N. Millennium Project, which has the goal of helping to cut the world's extreme poverty in half by 2015, I spent several eye-opening days with colleagues last July in a group of eight Kenyan villages known as the Sauri sublocation in the Siaya district of Nyanza province. We visited farms, clinics, hospitals and schools. We found a region beset by hunger, AIDS and malaria. The situation is grim, but salvageable.

More than 200 members of the community came to meet with us one afternoon. Hungry, thin and ill, they stayed for 3 1/2 hours, speaking with dignity, eloquence and clarity about their predicament. They are impoverished, but they are capable and resourceful. Though struggling to survive, they are not dispirited but are determined to improve their situation. They know well how they could get back to high ground.