Anika Altaf, Reaching the ultra poor: comparing NGO approaches in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Benin

On 29 January 2019, Anika Altaf succesfully defended her PhD at the University of Amsterdam. Dissertation: The many hidden faces of extreme poverty: Inclusion and exclusion of extreme poor people in development interventions in Bangladesh, Benin and Ethiopia.

Anika Altaf is working at the ASC on her PhD on how to target the ultra poor in poverty-alleviation initiatives. Her research aims to discover how extremely poor people can benefit on a long-term basis from such actions. In addition, she is attempting to find out who the ultra poor are and the struggles they face. Her research is being carried out in Bangladesh, Benin and Ethiopia using the PADev methodology and she is trying to connect Asian experiences (in a country where NGOs are experimenting with and developing methods to reach the ultra poor) with African experiences.

Prof. Ton Dietz, the Director of the African Studies Centre, is supervising this research project with Dr Nicky Pouw from the University of Amsterdam. The research is funded by Woord & Daad.