Seventythree’s work is characterized by three commitments

The commitment to a new economics of development.

Where conventional economics has yet to catch up with the realities of resource scarcity, our economics focuses on sustained resource productivity. Where speculation, and its management, has replaced long-term economic planning, we reveal what it takes to build a productive economy from the ground up. Where inequality is soaring, our economics is about creating wealth held in common. Where the market is governing dogma, to us the market is merely one tool among many to deliver a productive economy.

The commitment to patient investment.

When financial capital is attracted only to extraction of natural resources or use of land, without taking into account the rights and wisdom of local people, it forces development at industrial speed. We therefore spend time to explain to investors and governments that to achieve the longer term benign transition in rural economies requires an investment approach that starts with the people, giving rural societies time to adapt and to get ahead of the process of change. This releases latent talent, generates new forms of enterprises and benefits both investors and local people alike.  It is development at human speed.

The commitment to adult learning.

We treat our partners – be they planners with PhDs or poor and illiterate farmers – as intellectual peers. We do not lecture with ready-made answers. Rather, we blend our analytical skills with a process of questioning that helps our partners to name their own learning needs, read their own realities, tap into their own knowledge, and find and test their own solutions to their own problems. Change begins with this level of ownership.

Back