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5 min readIn Nigeria’s capital Abuja, Lariat Al-Hassan ran a one-woman paint business out of the trunk of her car. Clients would test her product, like it, and then ask to visit her office. She didn’t have one. They would back out. She was stuck: she needed clients to afford an office, but needed an office to keep clients. Then she heard a radio ad for a government contest called “You Win!” — and assumed it was a scam. It wasn’t. That contest became one of the most intriguing experiments in development economics, and it unfolded alongside a separate revolution in how economists learn what actually works, centered on a small border town in Kenya.
The lottery for business growth
Nigeria’s finance minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, faced a brutal problem: eight million young people needed jobs, and many wanted to start businesses but couldn’t get loans. Banks had no way to vet tiny, informal one-person companies. Her radical idea was to skip lending entirely and just give them money — not as a loan, but as a grant. To decide who got it, she ran a nationwide business-plan competition.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:39) **Welcome to Summer School: Kenya & Nigeria** - Robert Smith introduces the final episode of the Planet Money Summer School World Tour, focusing on Kenya and Nigeria.
- 2 (04:05) **Case Study 1: Nigeria's "You Win" Contest - Free Money for Small Businesses** - The Nigerian government creates a nationwide business plan competition to solve the "missing middle" problem by handing out piles of cash.
- 3 (13:50) **The Results of "You Win" - Did Free Money Work?** - The program creates thousands of jobs, but the long-term question is whether the businesses survive and grow.
- 4 (17:30) **Professor Breakdown: The "Missing Middle" Problem** - Tavni Suri explains why banks can't fill the gap that the "You Win" program filled.
- 5 (20:29) **Case Study 2: Busia, Kenya - The Town That Revolutionized Economics** - A small border town becomes the epicenter of a Nobel Prize-winning method for testing what really works in development.
- 6 (27:20) **Busia Becomes a Research Hub** - The success of the textbook trial attracts a wave of economists, transforming the town into a laboratory for global poverty solutions.
- 7 (31:17) **Professor Breakdown: Human Capital & The Legacy of RCTs** - Tavni Suri discusses the value and limits of the Busia research.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
In Kenya and Nigeria, economics isn’t just theory, it’s real life. We’ll look at some radical experiments that turned out to be enormously successful.
What are the building blocks of health, education and prosperity for all? How does a nation grow rich? What is the most effective way to spend a dollar to fight poverty? We find answers in a town that became the laboratory for new concepts in economic research that netted some researchers the most prestigious prize in economics.
Featured Episodes:
Featured Terms:
- Randomized controlled trial
- Human capital
- Missing middle
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The series is hosted by Robert Smith and produced by Sophia Paliza-Carre. This episode was edited by Planet Money Executive Producer Alex Goldmark. This episode was fact-checked by Leyla Doss, with engineering by Annlie Huang.
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