Building the Dream

Western efforts to reduce poverty overseas have long been plagued by two very human tendencies: we yearn for simple solutions and we crave quick results. Celebrated economist Jeffrey Sachs played to these tendencies when he announced in 2005 he would end extreme poverty in isolated and desperately poor African communities within five years. Most development professionals shook their heads in disbelief.

Journalism suffers from a parallel affliction, especially in these days of news written to convince rather than to inform: so many reporters want the story to make a grand statement that speaks to common wisdom, reinforcing or critiquing our prejudices. Nina Munk succumbed to this urge when she framed her insightful account of Sachs and his Millennium Villages Project (MVP) as an investigation into whether aid can ever work. I shook my head in disbelief.