What We Learned from Esther Duflo’s Framework in Egypt

Esther Duflo won the Nobel Prize for her work in using randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to test and refine poverty alleviation strategies. Her approach emphasizes targeted interventions in education, health, and microfinance. At bld.ai, we were inspired by her framework and decided to apply it in Egypt, aiming to build sustainable tech jobs through training and financial support.

We started by partnering with local leaders who were excellent at teaching computer science. Our goal was to replicate their success on a broader scale, providing training to a large pool of talented individuals. We also offered microfinance to help them launch and grow their own tech consulting businesses, believing that this combination of education and capital would create sustainable growth.

But reality hit us hard. While we successfully connected these trained individuals to large enterprises desperate for tech talent, we missed a critical piece: the thought leadership needed to help them scale and run quality outsourcing and professional services businesses. Many partners treated our financial support as a paycheck rather than seed capital, and without strong leadership to guide them, they struggled to build something sustainable. The best of the newly trained workers were quickly hired away by big companies like Amazon and Meta (and moved outside of Egypt), leaving us without the local impact we had hoped to create.

Duflo’s work also teaches the importance of iteration and learning from data. In that spirit, we’re treating this experience as a learning process. We’ve realized that finding talented individuals isn’t enough. What we really need is to foster leadership and provide the kind of guidance that helps these businesses scale successfully. We’re refining our approach, gathering more data, and staying open to new ideas.

Where We Go from Here

We’re still committed to our mission, but we recognize the need to adapt. Our focus now is on fostering leadership and ensuring our partners have the skills and mindset to succeed. We’re also inviting collaboration from researchers who want to help us refine our approach. While we’re not yet at the scale to run massive RCTs, that’s where we’re headed. Our goal is to scale these efforts from hundreds to tens of thousands, creating real, lasting impact.

This is a journey, and we’re in it for the long haul.