Esther Duflo presented on June 29, 2022 in Paris the first projects selected by her Innovation Fund for Development (FID), launched in 2021 by the French government with the objective “to become more effective in the fight against poverty”.
“If there is no shortage of promising ideas for the fight against poverty, they still have to be scientifically evaluated, demonstrated their effectiveness and successfully deployed”, introduced the French co-winner with Abhijit Banerjee of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2019. This is the ambition of the FID, chaired by Esther Duflo and whose first projects are already there: to extend the conservation of cassava from three days to 18 months through an appropriate treatment that can reduce agricultural losses of around 40%; develop solar-powered fridges in remote villages to keep fruits and vegetables longer; promote adult literacy in northern Niger through mobile phones; resolve agro-pastoral conflicts by organizing a direct dialogue between farmers and herders…
When we know that a third of agricultural production is abandoned at the edge of the fields, that the cold chain is absent from the countryside for lack of electricity, that the conflicts between breeders and farmers cause thousands of deaths each year, we understand better the scope of these ideas, which have yet to be transformed into actions.
There is no shortage of intuitions for reducing poverty and inequalities, but they still need to be tested, validated, encouraged and replicated so that they end up succeeding and improving the daily lives of the poorest. Promoting these advances at all stages of the project is the primary function of the FID, which has a budget of 15 million euros. Especially since the best ideas can turn out to be very complex to materialize, with paths strewn with pitfalls.
“There are many promising ideas with the potential to reduce poverty, but only by rigorously testing them can we identify which ones actually work.”
Esther Duflo, Nobel Prize in Economicsat franceinfo Africa
“Many entrepreneurs claim to make a profit and at the same time have a positive impact on society or the environment. This is often a simple belief. What we do with the FID is precisely to scientifically verify the social impact of a project through comparative field studies, as we show the effectiveness of a drug before launching it on the market.”
Esther Duflo and her team of researchers from MIT, the prestigious American university where she teaches, have revolutionized the economic approach to development. “Before, we had a few simple ideas like growth, even if we didn’t really know what it measured and who it benefited. We want to reduce poverty starting from the problems on the ground and try to bring a solution with local actors.”
A methodology developed for 20 years with success in India, Latin America and Africa by MIT and universities around the world. In the 2000s, MIT conducted extensive field research on the value of subsidizing fertilizer or mosquito nets, with results that have already changed the lives of hundreds of millions of people.
Over the past ten years, thousands of researchers around the world have adopted these methods. Togolese Minister of New Technologies Cinda Lawson said that she had followed the advice of Esther Duflo to send financial aid by telephone transfers to the poorest populations in the country. Simpler, cheaper and faster to implement than food aid, according to MIT researchers. This has made it easier for these populations to accept the periods of confinement during the Covid crisis, knowing that the poorest have to work every day if they want to feed their children.
Among the many ideas/projects presented in Paris, the use of an anti-mosquito repellent balm based on shea butter certified by the WHO. Noting the habit of Burkinabè mothers of massaging their children with shea butter, the idea came to enrich it with a mosquito repellent. The FID will support a survey of 1,600 households with at least one child under the age of three. This study should allow a significant reduction in the transmission of malaria in the villages of Burkina Faso.
Another “hair-raising” project supported by the FID, improving the mental health of women, through raising awareness among hairdressers. “Hairdressing salons are places where women’s words are freed”, passionately asserts Marie-Alix de Putter, founder of the NGO Health by Air (healing through the hair). This young woman had, after a personal tragedy, the intuition that hairdressers can be, if they are aware, the first to detect mental health problems. Disorders that affect millions of people in Africa, but which still have a taboo character. The aid from the FID will make it possible to train an initial sample of 200 hairdressers in Côte d’Ivoire in psychology.