NPR article on our work in Togo

Read about our work on NPR: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/02/15/966848542/the-pandemic-pushed-this-farmer-into-deep-poverty-then-something-amazing-happene

Shegun Adjadi Bakari, advisor to Togo’s president, consulted with Esther Duflo, who in 2019 won a Nobel prize for her experimental approach to alleviating poverty — using randomized control trials to see if programs were working. Her suggestion: Get in touch with Joshua Blumenstock!

Blumenstock, an associate professor at the School of Information at Berkeley, has been researching new and different ways to measure poverty. His lab showed that computers can detect levels of wealth just by satellite imagery, and that the way people use their cell phones can be a pretty good indicator of how rich or poor they are.