Reflection on a Year Living in Kenya

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I had a few goals moving to Kenya, and I achieved all of them!

  • Gain experience and credibility working and living in a low-middle income country: Definitely done. It’s been clear when talking to people at different companies/NGOs/”development” actors how much more valuable I would be as an employee from having worked in Nairobi for a year

  • Decide if I would be comfortable living abroad for longer than a year and if I like and do well at the type of work aimed at eliminating extreme poverty: Definitely. I love it here, and see myself living here for at least 1-2 years more, maybe longer. At this point my thinking is that for me to move away from Kenya I would need to have some specific job in another country that seemed more impactful than whatever I’m working on in Kenya (though very possible that my thinking will change in a few years!)

  • If I like it, find out where in the global development/health space I think I can make the greatest contribution (1): In the near term, the startup space is for me. In the long term that could change, but I don’t see myself at any point wanting to work at a government organization or large NGO. I have worked with these types of organizations in consulting, and don’t think they are very effective at helping people (2). I also don’t enjoy that type of work (or consulting work) very much. I’m very excited by the idea of helping to build a company, and I think I have the strongest chance to have impact in on people living in extreme poverty by sustainably creating jobs, decreasing prices, and driving economic growth. I also am more open to working at an Effective-Altruism-aligned charity in the medium-to-long term

  • Learn about the different ideas and actors in global development / global health: Done. I’ve been lucky to work on three projects in the development space while at BCG. Plus you can’t go to one party or ultimate frisbee game without meeting people who work at embassies, impact startups, UNESCO, local charities, etc. (3) which has lead to tons of great conversations about global development and global health

  • Refine my views on what the world - and in particular Americans - should do differently from what we’re doing now in order to improve life for everyone on the planet: With regards to extreme poverty, I wrote up my thoughts in a previous post. I’ve also updated my thinking that lots of people should be working harder to improve the long-term future of humanity, but that’s a bit outside the remit of this post as it’s not anything I learned from being in Africa in particular (4).

So what does all this mean in terms of my next steps? I am leaving BCG but staying in Nairobi, to work at a startup in Nairobi! (I will not be founding a startup myself, though maybe in few years I will decide to). Things are not 100% settled yet, but I will share an update when they are.

I’m so grateful for having had the opportunity to move to and work in Nairobi, and am excited for the adventure to continue. And I’m so grateful for everyone who reads this either out of pity for me or because it’s genuinely interesting to you - either way I appreciate it! If you haven’t been reading along and are interested in more about what I’ve learned and done in Kenya, my favorite posts are Reflections from my first two weeks, Iowa vs. Kenyan corn, and on helping people in extreme poverty (5)).

If anyone, from anywhere on the internet is reading this, is thinking about helping to end extreme poverty, and is interested in talking, let me know! Email me at ljeure@gmail.com

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1. I’ve moved away from saying “I want to work in development” and towards “I want to help end extreme poverty”, though sometimes I am cowardly and still say the former

2. For a lot (but not all!) of these organizations, you shouldn’t even think of their purpose to be helping people as much as possible. Their main purposes (in terms of what these organizations are actually set up to do) are to expand the soft power of their host countries (in the case of government orgs) or meet impact metrics, prove value to funders, and expand their scope of activities (a cynical view of many NGOs)

3. A perspective shift from meeting all these people has been “wow there are tons of people in situations similar to mine trying to do work similar to what I’m doing”. It’s been humbling - I’m not as special as I thought I was. On the other hand, none of these people seem to have exactly the same approach as I do, which is probably good - lots of different but overlapping perspectives trying to solve problems

4. Basically I was persuaded that I had been underweighting Effective Altruism arguments around the neglectedness of humanity’s future. I now think it’s quite a bit more likely that in the medium or long term I work at an Effective Altruism organization on topics related to existential risk And in the short term I’m helping to start an Effective Altruism group in Nairobi

5. My donation matching offer is still valid for the last one: