Rethinking poverty, livelihoods and economic activity. The questionnaire was designed to measure consumption. But the people I interviewed were not consuming in the way the questionnaire assumed. They were producing. They were storing. They were exchanging. They were sharing. They were sustaining life through systems that never appeared in the columns of the survey. The questionnaire was looking for cash flows. The people were explaining livelihood systems. This was not

The questionnaire was not the problem. The problem was the theory of change it was carrying. Early in my career, I was part of a team conducting a feasibility study for a rural road project. Before fieldwork began, I designed a questionnaire to establish baseline conditions. The purpose was straightforward. Before the road was improved, we needed to understand existing conditions. After the road was completed, we would return and measure change. Had travel time reduce

Rethinking transport, development and the realities we fail to see Development does not begin with projects. It begins with assumptions. Before governments build roads, design policies, measure poverty, allocate resources or introduce new technologies, they decide what counts as reality. The questions come first. The categories come next. The measurements follow. The interventions come after. Every development intervention carries a theory of change, whether it is written in