Poor countries are riddled with fraud, corruption, etc... It is a challenge just doing what we take for granted in the west.

For example, if you have a toll road, you can expect most people to bribe the guy at the toll booth instead of paying the fee, and the little that is collected will probably line the pockets of whoever is in charge instead of maintaining the road.

Having a government program that actually works is extremely impressive in these conditions. It is not about economic advise, it is about being able to build something under such adversity.

Note: I don't know about Togo specifically, maybe it is different, with poor countries, that's the general idea.

You comment only makes sense if you assume that they are poor of their own fault rather than due to a history of severe exploitation and other uncontrollable factors; and if you assume that the strategy can't be considered independently.

But the alternative you put is to assume that their failures are due to external forces and their success due to policy choices.

China also has a history of severe exploitation and other uncontrolled factors. They got wealthy with breathtaking speed. It is unwise to look past that to Togo.

I don't think anyone is claiming that we should only look at Togo and not other nations that have implemented successful policy. On the contrary, governors should look around the globe to find examples of success stories in order to build a corpus from which to learn about the realities of policymaking.

Shenzhen seems to be an example of making a small number of extremely wealthy individuals and a large number of sweatshop-tier factory labourers; I wouldn't class that as an example to follow unless you only care about creating millionaires.

> But the alternative you put is to assume that their failures are due to external forces and their success due to policy choices.

I'm not assuming it, but I think someone should make that argument given that the country was subject to over 300 years of brutal colonialism which included being the literal capital of the slave trade and later neocolonialism. China's a different story because they eradicated foreign ownership and interference before any of its success and still has pretty heavy capital controls and other mechanisms in place including local ownership requirement laws.

In any case, there are many other factors that could influence any countries development starting from simple geographic luck. To assume that it is a self-made problem (or isn't) without argument is not useful.

Then instead of absolute (global) measures, we could look at relative improvement rates instead?

"Even if they've done this well it seems risky to start trying to learn from the "successful" programs of poor states on the theory that maybe the things they are successful at are holding them back."

You should always looking at what others are doing and draw your own conclusions. I think one thing that may cause or is already causing problems for the US is the refusal to look at what other countries are doing, for example in health care, social programs or drug policy. You don't have to copy what others are doing but having a good understanding is very helpful.

given that this rollout happened over the pandemic, it's not likely to be the cause of Togo's poverty.

innovation comes from thought diversity. Just a different culture and set of circumstances can certainly bear fruits of positive systematic change. Most important is to vet the concept, not the country.

How do we know that the concept is isolated and able to be vetted separately? Needing stimulus is usually a sign of other policy failures in my book.

People like to act as though big economic crashes are random and unpredictable like a weather event. They aren't, they are generally a result of policy too.

By analyzing and researching the idea and context, not by dismissing them because “they are poor”.