While the world’s elite gathered in Davos, Switzerland, for conversations about ‘collaboration in the intelligent age’, I was collaborating with incredible young entrepreneurs from Kenya and Tanzania for the launch of Africa’s first citizen-led, co-produced, localised measure of prosperity – The Maisha Bora (‘Good Life’) Index.
Historically, governments have had a long-held obsession with Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the key way of measuring prosperity and growth of any country’s economy. In reality, we know it’s fruitless. It does not help to demonstrate how individuals are benefitting, or losing out from an economy. When you look at Tanzania, the country had a growth rate of 5.6% in 2024, but a poverty rate of 42.9%. Those metrics don’t paint a realistic picture of an individual’s quality of life.
The Institute for Global Prosperity’s mission is to redefine prosperity for the 21st century, which includes how it is measured. We are proud to have already launched new ways to measure prosperity in four countries so far: UK, Lebanon, Kenya and Tanzania. Working in close partnership with local grassroots organisations, we have established new prosperity indexes which report on metrics which matter the most to local communities, the real drivers of our economy.
The Sustainable Development Goals and the World Bank do have a broader vision which goes beyond GDP, using a language which articulates ‘shared prosperity’. ‘Prosperity gains’ is the World Bank’s new metric that measures shared prosperity by accounting for the distance between current income levels and a specified prosperity standard. This provides a measure of income disparities between countries (World Bank Prosperity Report).
Having said this, the measure of shared prosperity is still narrow. Shared prosperity is defined by the World Bank as the rate of income growth or consumption of the poorest 40% population.
Globally, there is a poverty standard of $25 per person per day. In Tanzania this is approx. 63,500 Tanzanian shillings. However, the poverty level of $2.15 per day in Tanzania is 5,00 Tanzanian shillings. Likewise, the Human Development Index again falls short of providing a meaningful measurement of prosperity that is personalised and human-centred. It simply measures the national level of human development, health, education and income.
Our work shows prosperity is multi-dimensional, and that true growth comes about as a result of drawing on collective social and natural resources. Real prosperity exists when communities have a voice, access to public services and stable livelihoods.
With hyper local insights, enabling targeted policy interventions in specific neighbourhoods, the citizen-led Index is being used by community, local leaders and municipality in wards in Dar es Salam, Tanzania to lead knowledge creation, action and co-design priority areas where interventions are urgently needed. Communities have identified three priorities – 1) infrastructure focused on drainage and solid waste management; 2) social services focused on safe water and affordable health insurance and 3) clean cooking energy. Issues they define as key to their quality of life.
There are so many examples of organisations and businesses that are growing profit while empowering and benefitting those who work for them and the local communities where they are situated. We are proud to support innovative new approaches, of which Fast Forward Africa 2030 (FF2030) is one perfect example. A group of young entrepreneurs working to deliver projects which meet the UN’s Sustainable goals.
Lennox Omondi, the Founder and CEO of Ecobana Limited is a board member of FF2030. His business creates 100% biodegradable sanitary towels, which are sustainable in that they are made up of banana fibres but they are also affordable for women. His business was founded on the premise of wanting to end period poverty and it meets at least three of the Global SDG’s but it also empowers the community where the factory has been established in Kenya, providing an innovative solution to the problem of waste management too (Professor Henrietta Moore and Lennox Omondi in conversation).
We’re developing a research framework to inform change, fuelled by local insights. The Prosperity Co-Laboratory (PROCOL) Africa is an innovative collaborative research programme seeking to broaden the discussion of what constitutes prosperity in Africa. Led by the Institute for Global Prosperity in close collaboration with local partners, our research harnesses cutting edge science, community knowledge, astute policy development and participatory research methods to develop smarter, localised understandings of prosperity that can be tailored to communities across the continent.
In Kenya, we are setting up three prosperity hubs. These will be citizen-led spaces, leading on regenerative agriculture, climate change, secure livelihoods; with Fast Forward 2030 Africa plugging in ideas and solutions imagined by inspiring young entrepreneurs.
Individuals involved are acknowledged for their contributions through a Citizen Science Academy Certificate and each of the hubs actively works with NGOs and government policymakers who are working in the same locality.
The Maisha Bora Index is dynamic. It can be used by communities, government and business to see what real differences interventions are making.
The Index is an example of the power of real data and insight observed within communities. It’s a start in a new and positive direction, redefining the process by which we track and support growth. We should also be thinking about the possibilities if we were to broaden our horizons and really tune in to what people need from their economies.
Imagine if government administrative data and natural capital data were open-sourced and accessible? There is scope for pairing the data alongside the rich and insightful views of local people and grassroots community organisations informing decision makers and empowering those who need change the most to define what prosperity means in their own words.
