Guest blog by Mohamed Omer Hussein
It was a very beneficial course for me. I learned a lot from it.
The Atlas of Economic Complexity is a godsend. It has detailed information about the imports and exports as well as the exact composition of the economic and trade activities of my country, Ethiopia. It’s also very customizable and visually appealing, and you can get what you want from it.
The PDIA approach was a new concept I was introduced to in order to solve a challenge. It really is an ideal approach for most problems, and using it leads to better and more sustainable solutions. That’s because it helps you get localized solutions that are perfect for your situation and frees you from just copying external solutions that worked elsewhere but may not be right for your specific case.
I gained a lot of clarity on my growth challenge. This course allowed me to look deeper into it and gave me a framework to work with. I haven’t made an actual real life action to try to solve the challenge, however, I gained enough knowledge to jumpstart the solution finding process. Now, I just need to talk to my supervisor to try and bring the knowledge I gained to reality.
Of course I’ll use what I learned in this course. I learned a lot, and it already started to reflect in the way I see economic challenges. I now don’t jump to blame corruption, even though it still has a huge presence in my reality. I see the short-sighted approaches and ready-made proposed solutions most policy makers do in my country. I recognize the need to iterate and look at the root cause of problems. I now know that there are possible lines of action to be taken given the current resources and system we have. We can look for positive anomalies and discover latent resources. I also don’t define success in purely numerical gains. Inclusivity and equity occupy a larger portion of what I define as success in my worldview now.
I’m very glad to have gotten this golden opportunity to study this course. It made a mark in me and I’ll gladly share the knowledge I have within my organization and wherever I end up in my country’s development journey.
This is a blog series written by the alumni of the Leading Economic Growth Executive Education Program at the Harvard Kennedy School. 61 Participants successfully completed this 10-week online course in December 2021. These are their learning journey stories.