Kenyan Tavneet Suri's research helps to understand the effects of technology on poverty in Africa

Thank you for accepting our invitation. Could you tell us a bit about yourself and your background?

I was born and raised in Nairobi, Kenya, where I finished high school. I then attended Trinity College, Cambridge, for my undergraduate degree in economics. From there, I went to Yale to complete a Masters in International and Development Economics, followed by a Ph.D. in Economics, also at Yale. On finishing my Ph.D., I joined MIT Sloan as an Assistant Professor and have been at MIT since. I am an academic and I love it! I teach economics at Sloan and I am heavily involved in applied microeconomic research. My research focuses on the effects of technology on poverty in Africa – technologies like improved seeds, mobile money, the internet. Most recently, I have been part of a large experiment on Universal Basic Income in two counties in Kenya. I have also worked in Uganda, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, and Ghana.

At MIT, I also play a role at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), in particular, I am the Scientific Director for Africa and I chair two research initiatives (one on agriculture and one on digital identification and finance).

Could you tell us more about your work in the Agricultural Technology Adoption Initiative and Digital Identification and Finance Initiative at J-PAL Africa?

Both the Agricultural Technology Adoption Initiative (ATAI) and Digital Identification and Finance Initiative (DigiFI) at J-PAL are funding initiatives where faculty and students in our network can apply for money to run randomized control trials (RCTs) in the respective areas of research interest. Both initiatives are heavily focused on research in Africa, though of course, they have different focus areas in terms of topics. ATAI focuses on agricultural technologies and transformation and DigiFI on digital identification and finance. In addition, under DigiFI we started an African scholars program where we have funds to support RCTs conducted by African scholars. For anyone interested, please reach out!

How do you think Universal Basic Income could scale up to African nations? What would be the limitations? How could we tackle that?

Great question! I think the first step is to understand what the impacts of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) would be before we start to think of scale-up. We need to understand the whole gambit of possible costs and benefits of a UBI and measure them before we can decide whether to scale it let alone truly understanding how to scale it. Ultimately, if the research shows that a UBI should be a part of the toolkit of policymakers, one of the biggest issues will be how to fund a UBI especially in countries where the tax base is quite small. And I think the solution to this will vary country by country, depending on the specific contexts at hand.

What are the digital financial products that African countries can benefit the most and how?

Another great question. I am not sure we know. We have seen important benefits to mobile money, currently in five different countries (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique, and Bangladesh). But, aside from mobile money, we still have to grow the evidence base on other digital financial products (which is why we set up DigiFI at J-PAL). There is a lot of ongoing work on digital credit, but I think we need a lot more work on this area before we can say what works best and what doesn’t. The good news here is that this means that there are lots of open questions for young researchers to work on!

Can you tell us what drew you to work in development economics?

Well, I am Kenyan so I always knew I wanted to do work relevant to Kenya in some way. I loved economics and math in high school so it seemed natural to apply to do an economics degree in college. I actually thought I would like to end up working for a multilateral organization like the World Bank. My Masters’ program at Yale was really a turning point for me – it allowed me to explore a wide variety of classes, including graduate Ph.D. level classes where I could really learn what research in this field was like. And pretty quickly, I also learned that I loved research. After my Masters, I really wanted to get a better sense of research in development economics so I spent some time in West Africa getting field research experience. And then I went on to do a Ph.D. in economics.

What is your day-to-day work like?

I don’t really have a day-to-day. This past year has been very different because of the pandemic where there is far more of a day-to-day. But let me talk about my pre-pandemic life where there is no day-to-day, it just varies a lot through the year, one reason I love what I do. Never a dull moment. I usually teach two classes each year, one (core microeconomics) for our mid-career students in the first half of the summer and a half-semester class (on businesses in emerging markets) in the Fall. When I am teaching, a lot of my week is spent preparing class and teaching, though I do squeeze in some time on research too. Most of my research involves building collaborations on the ground (with government, private sector companies or non-profits) and then collecting primary data in the field. I have a team in the field (currently just in Nairobi, but sometimes across a couple of different countries I happen to be working in at the time) and I talk to them several times a week when we are in data collection phases. I also spend a lot of time in the field myself – I am usually somewhere on the sub-continent at least four times a year, between visiting my field projects and other J-PAL Africa events (or even visiting the J-PAL Africa office). So, some days you will find me in rural Kenya, some days you will find me in Nairobi or Freetown or maybe even Cape Town, and some days you will find me in my office at Sloan, either in front of a computer writing some code or with my US-based research team, brainstorming about how to analyze a specific survey.

What excites you most about doing research in development economics?

I love doing research. I love the process of learning more about how the world works and which policies make a difference and which do not. To me, the core of my work is building on and adding to the existing base of knowledge on what works and what doesn’t work to improve lives in sub-Saharan Africa. Hopefully, eventually, that knowledge makes its way to policymakers and stakeholders who are making decisions in these environments.

One newer piece of my work that I love is that I edit a site called VoxDev. We launched VoxDev over three years ago and the aim was to bring academic research in development economics closer to practice. Our research papers are often sixty, seventy pages long and are therefore not accessible to policymakers or other stakeholders who are decision-makers on the ground in developing countries. So we built VoxDev where we have short articles, podcasts, and videos on academic research that are non-technical but highlight the key findings and their relevance. I have loved editing VoxDev – it gives me a chance to try and bridge the gap between research and practice and it has been both exciting and rewarding. I hope we can continue to grow its reach over the next few years.

What good habits do you think were instrumental to your success?

I have to admit two core components of my success: one is luck and the second is people who invested in me along the way.

A lot of the opportunities that came my way were just largely luck, which I am so grateful for. I think one advantage of recognizing and truly internalizing how important luck has been in my life has been the realization that these opportunities that came my way should not be wasted under any circumstances. So, of course, working hard has played an important role and has a bit of resilience. But, first and foremost, I was lucky. Equally important to realize the role of luck, is also realizing that a lot of people have played important roles in my success. My main Ph.D. advisor (Mike Boozer) not just trained me in graduate school, but has been my mentor my whole career to date – he has been there to advise and support me every single step of the way. I wish everyone a mentor like him. Other mentors along the way also have been important: a mentor from Cambridge who really pushed me to go to graduate school, mentors from Yale, and then mentors at MIT who guided me through the maze that is academia. In addition to mentors, I have been lucky to have worked with the most amazing research teams, across all the countries I have worked in. Without these research teams, without their passion and commitment, my work would not be possible. So, working every day to be a better manager and boss to your research teams is key (and often underappreciated) in my books.

Finally, I will say I love what I do. I am excited to go to work, I love teaching and I love research. This makes my work so much easier!

Who were your career role models growing up, if any?

I didn’t really have a career role model growing up, especially since I had no idea I would end up as an academic. I would have laughed hysterically (and bet heavily against you) if you had told me that I would end up as an academic, that too at MIT. I never imagined this career, ever.

That said, I did have role models more generally who just pushed me to aim high. You will probably not be shocked to hear that my economics and math teachers in high school were important role models for me. My economics teacher (Mr. Kiyimba) really made me love economics. And my math teacher (Mr. Mohana) really pushed me to do more than just the “standard” set of classes in high school, especially in math. I am forever grateful to them both – they definitely saw something that I could not at the time!

What would you say to encourage young Africans to enter the field of economics?

Well, economics is, I think, one of the most versatile and relevant fields to be in (of course, I am biased). It opens so many doors to so many different careers, from working in the private sector, working in government, working for multilateral organizations, academia, and more. I also think economics is extremely analytical and offers a set of frameworks and tools which really help us understand how the world around us works, and helps us better understand human behavior. I really do believe everyone should take at least a couple of economics classes just for the toolkit and perspective it provides.

More broadly, if you want to be a researcher in development economics, there is just so much to do! So many important unanswered questions and so much yet to learn which makes it so rewarding.

What does your educational background look like? Which classes did you enjoy the most? Which ones were key to entering your field?

Well, I spoke of high school above. After high school, I went to study economics at Cambridge University as an undergraduate and then applied to and joined the Master's program in International Development Economics at Yale. That year at Yale was a turning point for me. I used that year to really experiment with classes. It was the first time I was exposed to the US educational system where I could take almost any classes I wanted, I could be a teaching assistant and a research assistant, all at the same time. It was a really liberating year for me and I loved being able to take a pretty random set of classes, simply because I was interested in them. I was lucky though to have taken (or been pushed to take) so much math in high school in Nairobi – that was truly a wise investment though I didn’t know it at the time. When I went to Yale, I had no intention of completing a Ph.D. in economics, nor of being an academic. As I mentioned, I thought I would end up working at a multilateral organization like the World Bank. As part of my Masters, I took Chris Udry’s Ph.D. class in development economics at Yale and after the first week or two of class, I knew I wanted to do research on Africa and that conviction only grew over the course of the semester. Chris also encouraged me to go to the field (to Ghana) after finishing my Masters, my first exposure to fieldwork, and for that Ghana will always hold a special place in my heart.

What are important lessons you've learned on your way to where you are now in your career?

I think the most important thing has been to be open-minded about your own skills and realizing there is always more to learn, including about how you can be the best version of yourself, in your work as well as in all your interactions with others. There are times I have forgotten that – it’s been an expensive lesson for me to learn. I think I also try to remind myself regularly how lucky I am – I think that has had an important impact on me.

If you were to start again, going back to when you finished high school, what would you have done differently?

I actually don’t know. I try not to have regrets, to be honest. I do look back on the past but mostly to learn what I could have done better but I do not spend too much time thinking about what I would have done differently. I think everyone has their own path to finding their passion and for some that may be longer than for others, but I think it is hard to replicate someone else’s path. In that sense, I look back at everything I did as just part of me finding my path, especially since I love what I do now and wouldn’t change it for the world.

What is something that someone wouldn't know by looking at your profile? Any fun facts?

Well before the pandemic, I had spent a year learning Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu… loved it, thanks to a truly amazing instructor. That said, I am not sure I will go back to it. It is probably the absolutely worst sport for a pandemic like this one.

What do you like most about your country of origin?

It’s home! It will always be home. I love that feeling of comfort, familiarity… The people are amazing, so warm and kind; and the country itself is just stunning, mountains, parks, beaches. Name it and we seem to have it. And, of course, the weather!! Whenever I go back home, I love looking out of the plane window as we come into the land in Nairobi (day or night) and feeling this sense of peace and joy at being back home.

Any final words for the African youth?

Let me rely on someone else for some final words. I love this quote from Maya Angelou: “Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud”.