This article is part of Busara’s Tafakari 2025 yearbook. You can download the whole yearbook here.

During my earlier days at Busara (more than ten years ago) my job description involved reading protocols during lab sessions. As a certified teacher, this role was a perfect fit for me, even though it was my first exposure to lab studies and the behavioral sciences in general. It reminded me of a core teaching principle: moving from the known to the unknown. The known was the teaching skills I was honing, which I could seamlessly apply to lead lab sessions, while the unknown was the new and fascinating world of behavioral science that I was just beginning to explore. Of course, I also had an impact: the lab participants followed my instructions. 

This occurred a few years after Busara established itself as a pioneering lab for behavioral and economic experiments, as documented in one of its earliest outputs, A methodology for laboratory experiments in developing countries. During this period, we learned and adapted extensively to the local context. Much like our laboratory experiments, it was a trial and error phase: we designed mobile lab cubicles out of canvas and metal rods, which took an entire day to set up (a process that now seems almost absurd given the ease of our current lab-in-the-field setups). This phase improved our techniques and infrastructure. 

During that growth time for the lab, when I began working with researchers who were new to the region and those already familiar with the Kenyan context, I was often introduced as the local expert. But is my impact to be found in being local? Or is it that I teach others ways of thinking they had not encountered before? My contribution is not having been born in Kenya; it is allowing people a glimpse into my way of thinking and working with tools that are new to the context in which we apply them. My impact is that I share the learning that I teach. 

You’re the expert in your field

Experts teach but also make their impact visible through their contributions. As pioneers in the field, Busara has supported the establishment of other labs in the Global South and collaborated on academic courses that enhance understanding and application of behavioral science in real-world settings. This is well illustrated by two insights on the science of learning: learning is most effective when we teach others, and social interaction enhances the learning process. At Busara, we focus on bridging the gap between behavioral science’s theoretical and practical aspects to create this valuable link. However, we also seek never to stop exploring how our way of thinking influences our work. The impact is also on what the mind does. 

Being in the room with smart people

It is no secret that our university professors are some of the world’s brightest minds. While this may be evident from attending higher education institutions in Kenya, there is no substitute for working closely with academics from top-ranked universities. But maybe we think we cannot impact the minds of the brightest people: they have already arrived.  

Meaningful interactions with academics from all over the world have created a lasting impact with some of Busara’s most valued affiliates, who remain very instrumental in fostering knowledge exchange across diverse contexts and facilitating academic courses that connect Busara with institutions of higher learning. Through such interactions, I have had the chance not only to learn from our educational partners but also to create impact in even more meaningful ways through teaching and learning.

In early 2020, just before the COVID-19 lockdowns began, Busara and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) collaborated on a course to give students hands-on experience in applying behavioral science in the field. For over a week, we facilitated training sessions for PhD students from local and international universities, ultimately contributing to our first-ever omnibus protocol derived from these collaborative research designs.

The Covid period opened a possibility for many things, including the opportunity to experience remote learning. In January 2022, we were invited to join a Global Poverty class at Loyola Marymount University. We did not only participate as local experts but as peers in the learning process where we actively participated in classroom discussions. Similar courses have followed suit.

Then came the course on Behavioral Experiments in International Development, which has been running at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy for a few years now: students in Chicago work with Busara in Nairobi to learn how to conduct the necessary background research that will make their experimental work valuable. Part of the teaching team is in Nairobi, and part is in Chicago. An unforgettable image that accurately captures this diversity in learning was once shared by Anisha Singh, former Director of the BRACE team. There she was, seated on her balcony in Nairobi, co-teaching a class at the University of Chicago alongside our Mareike Schomerus. 

When I joined this teaching team in 2024, it was truly enriching to witness the students’ enthusiasm—not only in attending the lectures but in exploring the local context from a fresh perspective, directly from someone embedded within it. I have the same experience when I host student interns who come to Busara from all over the world to learn from us, a promise to create a lasting impact through the generations to come.

What did I gain from all of this? I learned that Busara is more than a research organization—it is a pivotal force in bridging the gap in behavioral science representation between the Global North and South. The impact also fosters interactions between, for example, senior academics, researchers, students, interns, and research participants. Above all, I have understood that impact comes from valuable human relationships. I was once told that we are fortunate to experience the best side of our visiting academics—something that owes much to the seeds of respect planted by our founders between local and international researchers, creating a truly inclusive and equitable environment.

Our impact might not lie in measuring changes in program design or even in the number of publications we produce; it could be in planting ways of thinking and connecting that people did not have before through getting teaching that they never expected.

References

1. Haushofer, Johannes, Marie Collins, Giovanna de Giusti, Joseph Muiruri  Njoroge, Amos  Odero, Cynthia  Onyago, James Vancel, Chaning Jang, Maneesh Varghese  Kuruvilla and Conor Hughes. 2014. “A Methodology for Laboratory Experiments in Developing Countries: Examples from the Busara Center.”  Available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2155217.
2. Beharry, Alicia. 2021 (June 1). “7 Interesting Facts About the Science of Learning.”  Skyprep https://skyprep.com/2021/06/01/7-interesting-facts-about-the-science-of-learning/.