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 [[YouWinProgram|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.