80,000 Hours for Global Development

Summary
We’re exploring the idea of building a career guidance platform aimed at helping the African diaspora - and professionals interested in development more broadly - pursue high-impact careers in Africa (or other LMICs).

The goal is to shift talented individuals towards higher impact roles in Global Development. 80,000 Hours already does this for a certain subset of people in developed countries (and primarily for AI and existential risks), but there are a large number of diaspora and others who are specifically focused on development, are seeking this advice and could be guided towards higher impact careers.

This is still early stage, and I’d welcome feedback on all aspects, but particularly assessing the scale of potential impact, most promising focus areas, and potential funders and collaborators to speak to.

Problem Statement

Many members of the African diaspora express a desire to “give back” or “make a difference” in Africa. In particular, there is a significant constituency of highly-skilled mid-career diaspora who want to refocus their career towards something with higher impact. The same is true of many others (non-diaspora) who are interested in working in or supporting global development. However, many people struggle to decide what to actually do. And, while they may be impact driven and conscious of effectiveness, because they are specifically focused on development (often in their home countries) they are not well-served by existing EA career advice.

Both global health and development, and more recently economic growth in LMICs are important EA cause areas. 800m+ people, primarily in Sub-Saharan Africa continue to live in poverty (on less than $3.65 a day according the updated World Bank definition) and there is plenty of evidence to identify which interventions to tackle this tend to be effective.

There is a large pool of talented people specifically interested in high-impact work on global development, but not in the conventional target market for 80,000 Hours and other EA-type career-advice platforms. Additionally, there are much bigger information barriers associated with global development work; people may lack relevant connections, jobs are often not filled through public applications, and the routes to high-impact work may be less clear.

Theory of Change

The basic mechanism here is career redirection: helping high-potential individuals choose more impactful paths than they otherwise would have.

More specifically, these individuals are often constrained by:

• Lack of high-quality guidance on where talent is most needed
• Lack of information/transparency on the nature of career paths in Africa and developing countries
• Poor visibility into the trade-offs involved in different paths (e.g. government vs. entrepreneurship vs. policy research)
• A tendency to over-prioritise prestige or surface-level “impact” narratives

Proposed MVP

The first iteration would be deliberately lightweight:

• A small set of articles outlining the most promising career paths. Both assessment of impact and practical advice on how to transition into working in these areas. Potential first career paths to focus on would be:
  • Government careers in Developing Countries. E.g. Taking a high-leverage government role where you can improve policy. (See this article from Probably Good)
  • Building a high-impact non-profit. E.g. preventing avoidable deaths in areas like Northern Nigeria (See this overview from AIM)
  • Entrepreneurship in developing countries, e.g. building a scalable VC-backed startup or a traditional business that employs a large number of people.
• An outline of the underlying philosophy of impact and a structured decision-making framework for career planning
• Useful links and further resources. E.g.
  • Articles like this; Why and how to start a startup serving emerging markets - Ben Kuhn
  • Career sites and sources of high-impact jobs
     

If there’s significant traction, this could expand to include:

• Profiles of people who have made high-impact career moves in African contexts
• One-on-one advising or a GPT trained on the content
• Deeper research into neglected cause areas in Africa
• A newsletter or content stream showcasing high-impact roles and stories
• A job-board or placements
• Community elements (e.g. a Whatsapp group or Slack forum)
• Fellowships and incubation programmes
  
   

Expected Impact

It’s hard to quantify the counterfactual value of redirecting one career, but it seems plausible that helping even a few dozen people per year shift toward higher-impact paths could lead to substantial downstream value. (Link to 80,000 Hours Impact Report here)

Let’s say:

• 10,000 engage with this content in the first year (e.g. read one article)
• 1000 engage deeply enough to explore or consider new paths (e.g. read most of the content)
• 50 make career changes they otherwise wouldn’t have — and half of those (25) take high-leverage roles (e.g. working at AIM charities, influential government jobs, or founding companies/non-profits)

Even if only a few of that 50 go on to have outsize impact, this could plausibly generate very significant value.

Key Uncertainties / Open Questions

• Scale & Demand: How many people are realistically reachable and persuadable? Is there a latent demand for this kind of advice?
• Distribution: How would we get this in front of as many suitable people as possible?
• Scope: Is it best to focus specifically on diaspora (might have advantages in terms of branding and specificity of content) or just anyone interested in global development? Also, whether to focus specifically on Africa, or all LMICs?
• Evaluating Career Paths: Which roles or sectors in Africa can actually have the highest impact? How does this vary based on one’s skillset/background? How to best evaluate?

Next Steps / How You Can Help

I’m looking to test interest and explore this idea further over the next few months. Immediate needs:

• Feedback on this concept (especially critical takes)
• Help identifying high-impact career paths to focus on first
• Potential collaborators:
  • 1. Those who might want to work on this (or even run it). Particularly those with experience in writing, career advice, and structured assessment of cause areas for global development.
  • 2. Funders who might be interested in supporting this project.
  • 3. Potential partners or supporters of other kinds.
     

If you have thoughts, I’d love to hear them in the comments. And if its something more specific/private then feel free to get in touch with me at [email protected] or https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-hyman1/