The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty Paperback – Illustrated, October 7, 2014

Does anyone know how to cure poverty in Africa? Jeffrey Sachs is a very talented economist at Columbia University. This book is about his commitment to raise money and use it to change in three years three different areas in sub Sahara Africa. He is a visionary, and certainly seems driven to help people change their lives and thus become better for the future for themselves and their families and neighbors and friends and relatives. I consider that this was the modern equivalent of what the Bible talks about in teaching a man to fish and thus he can feed himself for a lifetime, vice just feeding hem for the day, which really does not solve his problem in his life. He set up and got funded an expensive and elaborate program to help a small part of Africa as a demonstration for three years. The thought was to integrate it into the area so that it became stand alone for the people and country.The author tracked the program for the three years, and saw the start of many good events that improved peoples lives. However, the programs seemed to create a new set of expectations, and transitioning out of the program when the money stopped was a real issue. In some cases the men were used to being herdsmen, but that way of life could not support them ,and so they needed to change. However the men did not want to change and seemed to consider the new jobs that were available to be beneath their dignity. In other cases, the aid team had a pickup truck to use for their errands. However, some of the people that they were trying to help regarded the pickup truck as something between a taxicab and an ambulance. When a toilet was built, and required periodic maintenance, the maintenance was not done by any of the natives. This was a simple task that the aid team could not get transitioned, and was typical of the issues. Overall, it seemed to me that the assistance was dependent to an overwhelming extent to the members of the aid team.Getting the people to be able to do for themselves was not something that Jeffrey Sachs and his team understood how to accomplish which is really unfortunate. Unfortunately, the basic message that I got is that in general, we in the west to not know how to effectively help the poor people of Africa so that they can help themselves improve their lives. It may not be possible for the good willed people of the west to provide constructive help to the people of Africa. History is full of many efforts with the worlds best intentions, but lousy results. In many cases the money is stolen and used to buy fancy cars like Mercedes or sent out of the country to some officials foreign bank account.A well done but depressing book. Well worth the read if you want to understand aid at a practical level.

Nina Munk's "The Idealist" provides is a good example of serious investigative journalism and qualitative critique of the Millennium Village Project and on Jeffery Sach's approach to ending poverty. In a word, Munk finds that the Project did not meet its lofty goals. The book is based on Munk’s visits to two project sites as well as extensive interviews. Nina Munk knows how to write—the book is a quick read, at times more like a novel than a book about development.A brilliant economist, Sachs started getting interested in development in the 1990s. His book, the End of Poverty, is his manifesto on how to reduce poverty. Basically he sees the poor as being caught in a “poverty trap” and requiring a nudge to escape. The nudge that Sachs has in mind is a package of investments and interventions, to improve health and education as well as ensuring that people have opportunities. Sachs sees this as requiring a quick and targeted public investment. With the investment, the target village will see rapid growth and a decline in poverty. This will essentially make the package self-sustaining as the village takes over the responsibility for the project.The Millennium Village Project is Sachs’ attempt to put his ideas into practice. With contributions from a number of large donors and enthusiastic staff, he sets off to prove that his theory can work in practice. This is where Nina Munk’s book comes in. I believe that she starts out being quite optimistic about the model, sharing Sachs’ optimism and excitement. With time, this changes.The book catalogs a series of missteps and naiveté, leading to a series of unintended consequences. Did the Millennium Village Project raise the living standards of its intended population? Quite likely, yes. However, with the same amount of money, they probably could have done a lot more. In short, the money was largely wasted. Munk catalogs these unintended consequences as well as some of Sachs’ other forays into politics.This book will be of interest to anybody in the development field. It both identifies the development impact of the project and tells a good story about the political economy of development. It is a good example of the use of qualitative data to tell a story. By design, the Millennium Village Project should have been evaluable by any number of evaluation techniques. Since Sachs did not play ball, this is the best that we have. And it is pretty good.

The Idealist is a well-written account of Jeffrey Sachs's attempt to end poverty in Africa. At the beginning, Munk portrays Sachs as the brilliant economist who has figured out how to end poverty. It is strange that Sachs is surprised that development professionals, who have been at this for decades, are skeptical about his approach. He tells them that they should do it his way, and is stunned when they don't always agree with him. Half way through the book, I expected the Millenium Villages Project to show amazing results. In the second half, however, it becomes clear that Jeffrey Sachs doesn't have a magic wand, and that just spending a lot of money into selected villages is not going to end poverty. So we go back to the USAID slog, working with people a little bit at a time, hoping they can lift themselves out of poverty.It is a sad ending, but I commend Munk for telling the story with all of its warts. Those of us that are not as smart as Sachs will just keep plugging, and hope some of our efforts work.

This book was a great read, the author is a talented writer. She does demonstrate that the problem of extreme poverty was not nearly as simple as Sachs originally thought and involves many complex larger environmental, cultural and political problems. That said, I actually found the book to be too harsh with Sachs, since it seems that the program was helpful it's just that Sachs overpromised. But on the other hand, Sachs needed to raise funds so it makes sense that he overpromised. Furthermore, one can argue that Sach's approach is more correct than what the author gives credit for, but much more funds per capita were needed. I didn't come away with a clear idea of what Munk is suggesting as the alternative to the problem of extreme poverty.