Brian Lehrer hosts Jeffrey Sachs: Your WNYC membership pledge at work!

Jeffrey Sachs was on The Brian Lehrer Show the other day. With about five minutes remaining Brian raised the issue I was most hoping to hear:  A direct question about a point by one of Sachs' critics.

Specifically, Brian asked Sachs about Nina Munk's illustration of the flaws in the technocratically-designed livestock market outside the "Millennium Village" of Dertu, Kenya, versus a local market which would be more accessible and thus more capable of accomplishing its goal of increasing trade.  "Is [Munk] onto one of the challenges, at least, of Westerners coming in from outside to try to get [the economy] going in developing-world nations, where it's hard to understand really what the cultures are and the local terms really are?" Brian asked.  Sachs replied bluntly, "No, not at all."  He did not - as one might expect from that dismissal - argue that the livestock market was in fact a success, but he did note that all Munk's verbs were past tense and based on reporting from 2008.  This, he claimed, divulged the flaw in Munk's view of development, which is that it's nothing more than a "snapshot."  In support of his own view, Sachs pointed to cell phones, mobile technology, and the demand for apps and IT (most of which has arisen since Munk's reporting was concluded).  Sachs relied on efforts to obtain and exploit new technology to use, for example, in banking, as a key impetus for trade and economic progress, proudly emphasizing that "in Africa it's led by Africans."

But Sachs' citation of bottom-up, stakeholder-driven economic activity cannot make his point.  Brian's question was whether "Westerners" and global-north-style development institutions confront challenges in working with (or on) cultures they have not become familiar with.  And Sachs' response completely overlooked these institutions.  Instead, it lauded the efforts of individuals who identified needs in their daily lives and found a way to meet their needs on their own.  

The segment began by noting that Sachs was halfway through his 20-year plan to end extreme poverty, but after all this time and all the billions spent is he starting to think that the best the West can do is to look to citizens themselves?