Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala appears in Piles of cash and a town of solutions in Kenya, Nigeria (Summer School) as Nigeria’s finance minister at the time of the YouWin Program. The source says she was responding to high youth unemployment and the difficulty many young Nigerians faced in getting capital for small businesses.

Her role links Nigeria’s job-creation problem to Evidence-Based Development Policy. The program had to allocate money at scale while limiting corruption risk, which pushed the design toward outside judging, anonymized applications, training, and randomization.

Connections

• Goodluck Jonathan - president who backed the program in the source.
• David McKenzie and World Bank - research design and evaluation context.
• Direct Entrepreneur Grants and Small Business Financing Gap - policy problem and tool.