Only Business Can End Poverty
In these first four chapters, we'll introduce you to your new customers and give you a bird's-eye view of poverty as they experience it throughout the Global South. If your acquaintance with the poor is limited to what you've observed in one of the wealthy societies of Europe, North America, East Asia, or Australia, you'll get a sense of how very different poverty is in most developing nations. You'll learn why we believe poverty persists there and how the traditional approaches pursued by governments, the UN, nonprofit organizations, and philanthropists have failed to eradicate poverty during a six-decade span when the global economy has expanded 17-fold. We'll detail the essential roles we believe government and philanthropy can nonetheless play, and we'll explain why we're convinced that business must be the driving force in ending poverty on a global scale.
In many parts of the world, farmers sell their produce much as their ancestors did — in open-air markets like this one in Ethiopia. Prices may vary from one town to another based on strictly local circumstances, such as the scarcity of water, the dominance of a large local landowner, or variations in cultural preference or taste.
Children in poor countries are typically put to work at an early age. Most leave school before grade five. Here, children in Nepal gather firewood for sale. This girl's family may be dependent on the additional cash her work brings in, even if her parents are healthy enough to work the long hours demanded by subsistence farming.
To residents of rich countries, the amounts of cash changing hands in market transactions may seem so small as to be inconsequential. However, the pennies this Ethiopian farmer earns from selling her wares on the street in town each week can make the difference between subsistence and starvation.
A restaurant can be a few pots and pans and a propane stove, as it is here in Bhopal, India. Individual entrepreneurs — more often than not migrants from villages where job opportunities are few — frequently start such businesses to generate urgently needed income to support their families. They often hire others at minimal wages to share the workload.