I have read "The End of Poverty” by Jeffrey Sachs countless times, and each time I return to the same question: This is powerful but can it really work in practice?

My brother, Edwin Musoni, was by then a field reporter with The New Times, brought this book home in 2007. At the time, its title meant very little to me.

I was an economics student then, and to be honest, I did not believe there was such a thing as the end of poverty, at least not in our lifetime. Poverty felt structural, permanent, almost natural, not only in Rwanda, but across much of Africa. The idea that it could be eliminated sounded more aspirational than realistic.

Yes, Rwanda had already registered tangible achievements across many sectors, but gaps remained, and they felt too deep, too entrenched to be closed within a generation.

To cut a long story short, I did not even dare to read the book until years later, after I began working directly with communities and witnessing, firsthand, a profound paradigm shift in the lives of people who once seemed sentenced to a lifetime of poverty.

That is when the title began to make sense, and the book I had kept on my shelf for years became central to my thinking. Jeffrey Sachs argues that poverty is not a personal failure; it is a systems failure and if systems are the problem, then systems—when designed deliberately—can also be the solution.

This is precisely where Rwanda has focused its attention: fixing the system methodically and intentionally, with the protection of communities, uplifting citizens, (Under Umuturage ku Isonga ideology that places people at the center of its development agenda). Programs were not left to chance or goodwill; they were structured, coordinated, and anchored in public accountability. Poverty was no longer treated as an individual misfortune, but as a national challenge requiring collective, systemic solutions. Consequently, all national development strategies, including Vision 2050 and the National Strategy for Transformation, are deliberately aligned around a single overarching objective: building progressive, wealthy and resilient communities.

Much of what Sachs describes as necessary to end poverty is not theoretical here. It is already embedded in how Rwanda governs, plans, and delivers. One of the eye-catching insights Jeff advances is the fact that development economics should be more like clinical medicine rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. What is Rwanda Doing?

Poverty is not one problem, and Rwanda treated it that way

One of Sachs’ most important insights is that people remain poor because multiple constraints affect them simultaneously: poor health, low levels of education, weak infrastructure, lack of assets, and exclusion from markets. In Rwanda, poverty is rarely treated as a single-issue problem. Much like in clinical medicine, a headache is not a standalone condition but rather a symptom manifesting an underlying issue that requires medical attention.

Through strategies such as Vision 2050, investments in health, education, infrastructure, and social protection are intentionally layered. Roads are built alongside remote high-end health centres and shown in my previous submission in the article on LinkedIn: From Infrastructure to Impact: Reflections on Rwanda’s Journey Toward Equitable Health Services.

"We are on a journey to restore dignity for every Rwandan. Every Rwandan should be able to speak for themselves, be self reliant and make their own choices,” President Paul Kagame said while speaking at a two-day visit to Rutsiro District back in 2015.

Health was never treated as charity

Sachs insists that health is not a social cost but an economic foundation, a principle that Rwanda internalized early. The Community-Based Health Insurance- Mutuelle de Santé system, supported by three community health workers in every village (totalling 58,567 in 2018), did not merely save lives; it protected household assets, reduced vulnerability, and enabled families to plan, invest, and recover from shocks.

When people are not one illness away from economic disaster, broader development outcomes become attainable. In addition to these initiatives, the establishment of a health post in nearly every cell, some upgraded to second-generation facilities offering dental and maternal delivery services, has further strengthened access to essential healthcare and reinforced the country’s human capital base.

Start where poverty actually lives

Another of Sachs’ core arguments within the poverty-trap framework is that agriculture cannot be bypassed in economies where the majority of poor households depend on it for their livelihoods. In such settings, low agricultural productivity, limited access to inputs, weak market linkages, and high exposure to shocks interact to reinforce chronic poverty. Without targeted intervention, these constraints prevent households from generating surplus, accumulating assets, or investing in productivity-enhancing technologies, thereby perpetuating the poverty trap.

Interventions such as the Crop Intensification Program (CIP), Girinka, and Nkunganire input subsidy scheme directly relax these binding constraints. Agricultural subsidies Nkunganire lowers the cost barrier to improved seeds and fertilizers, raising yields and stabilizing food availability; the CIP consolidates these gains through coordinated production, land use consolidation, and market access; and Girinka rebuilds household asset bases by restoring productive capacity. Together, these interventions generate cumulative effects—improving food security, nutrition, incomes, and resilience—while Girinka, in particular, exemplifies Sachs’ assertion that escaping poverty is not solely about income growth but about restoring agency and enabling households to break free from the poverty trap.

Breeding social protection

A central theme in Sachs’ work is the rejection of the notion that social protection inevitably breeds dependency; instead, he argues that well-designed safety nets enable progress by stabilising households long enough for productive investments to take hold. This is where programmes like VUP stand out as solutions to deliver to the individuals and at the same time to the community and the country as well. Public works under VUP programmes generate income while simultaneously building community assets; direct support protects households that are unable to work; and graduation pathways are explicitly designed to move beneficiaries toward self-reliance.

Support is neither open-ended nor absent—it is intentional, conditional, and structured to complement investments in health, education, and agriculture. In this way, social protection functions as a binding agent, preventing shocks from unraveling gains achieved in other sectors and enabling households to escape the poverty trap.

While Sachs emphasizes the importance of data-driven targeting, Rwanda adds a critical dimension: legitimacy. The Ubudehe process (outphased now), though imperfect, recognized that communities possess contextual knowledge of poverty that quantitative instruments alone cannot fully capture. By enabling communities to participate directly in identifying vulnerability, Rwanda strengthens trust in the system and improves targeting effectiveness. This integration of technical data with social legitimacy enhances the credibility of social protection interventions, ensuring that assistance reaches those most in need while reinforcing collective ownership of development outcomes.

Is the book all that?

One of the weaknesses Sachs repeatedly highlights in The End of Poverty is the absence of effective monitoring and evaluation, which often results in policy debates focused on procedural compliance rather than substantive outcomes. As he observes, development practice can descend into "formalistic debates on whether or not a particular policy has been carried out, not on whether the policy was the right one in the first place.”

He illustrates this failure through the fable of a farmer whose chickens continue to die as a priest prescribes one remedy after another "prayers, potions, oaths” until all the chickens are dead, only for the priest to lament that he had many other good ideas. Sachs’ critique is therefore not about a shortage of policies or solutions, but about the absence of timely feedback, learning, and accountability mechanisms needed to adjust course before failure becomes irreversible.

If there is one area where Rwanda goes beyond the framework presented in The End of Poverty, it is in Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, and Learning.

Through Imihigo, development plans are not aspirational documents but binding commitments. Targets are clearly defined and made public, performance is regularly reviewed, and results carry consequences.

This system shifts the emphasis from policy intention to policy delivery, embedding accountability across levels of government. While many countries articulate strong development policies, few institutionalize enforcement and learning with such rigor, making Rwanda’s approach a practical response to the very implementation gaps Sachs identifies.

The story is not finished yet

Reading Sachs today also draws attention to areas that continue to demand deliberate policy focus. Urban poverty is emerging in new and complex forms, youth employment must expand at a faster pace to absorb a growing labor force, and some households still fall back into vulnerability following shocks. These challenges should not be interpreted as failures of the development model, but rather as indicators of an evolving poverty landscape. They represent the next frontier—requiring adaptation, innovation, and sustained institutional commitment.

What Rwanda demonstrates is not perfection, but possibility. Poverty is neither inevitable nor cultural, and it is certainly not permanent. It is shaped by choices, institutions, and priorities. This insight lies at the heart of The End of Poverty. Rwanda’s experience shows that when these choices are made deliberately and consistently, Sachs’ arguments move beyond theory and into practice. Much of the book’s message has not only been understood, but already put to work.

Richard Ndahiro serves as Regional Director of Planning and Budgeting in Eastern Province.