The Semantics of Poverty
Oct 21, 2008 
Categories: Foreign Aid
Tags: Iqbal Quadir, Michael Maltese
Managing Director Michael Maltese writes about the need to change the terms of the discussion on global poverty and progress.
International Herald Tribune
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Last Friday, the world observed the UN international day for the eradication of poverty. It was a sobering reminder that billions still live without access to clean water, electricity or healthcare.
But why do we focus on poverty and its eradication rather than on how to bring prosperity to the developing world?
Is it too radical an idea to shift the focus to how the rich got rich? It may be that the semantics of poverty alleviation itself - which speak far more to the problem than the solution - is a key to what hinders our efforts to ameliorate global inequality.
The premise of most foreign aid is that governments are a proxy for the interests of people and will act on behalf of their destitute populations. Both history and empirical evidence suggest otherwise. Wishful thinking, rather than creative thinking, is directing billions of aid dollars.
A more entrepreneurial approach to development is in order - especially considering that many of the developments that led to rich countries' affluence came through innovations and enterprise by people on the ground, rather than government dictum.
Through a $50 million gift from Legatum, a global investment firm, a new center was founded at MIT by entrepreneur Iqbal Quadir, founder of GrameenPhone in Bangladesh. Its focus is not the reduction of poverty, but rather the promotion of entrepreneurs, the true catalysts for economic and political progress in low-income countries. This notion of bottom-up economic development and innovation is gaining traction.
If we retain the semantics of poverty, we risk focusing on the wrong part of the half-filled glass.
Michael F. Maltese Cambridge, Massachusetts Managing director of the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
URL: http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/21/opinion/edlet.php
