What if communities could create their own money — and use it to trade their way out of poverty without waiting for banks, governments, or donors?
In this TBLI Talk, Robert Rubinstein sits down with Will Ruddick, founder of Grassroots Economics Foundation and one of the world's most original thinkers on community currency and poverty eradication. A physicist turned development economist, Will has spent over 15 years in East Africa building something the economics establishment said couldn't work — and proving them wrong. His Sarafu and Bangla-Pesa programmes have introduced community currencies to over 4,400 businesses and schools across Kenya, enabling over 60,000 households to trade goods and services worth $4 million — without relying on scarce national currency. His radical truth: poor communities are not poor in resources. They are poor in the medium of exchange.
In this episode:
- What community inclusion currencies are — and why they are one of the most powerful tools for poverty eradication ever developed
- How Sarafu and Bangla-Pesa work in practice — and what a 22% average increase in participating businesses' incomes looks like on the ground
- Why the scarcity of national currency traps communities in poverty — and how community currencies break that trap
- How blockchain and digital ledger technology are scaling these programmes across Kenya, Cameroon, and South Africa
- What ancient mutual aid traditions from over 42 Kenyan tribal practices reveal about the future of alternative economics
- What investors, humanitarian organisations, and development professionals need to understand about this model
The key insight: The problem in poor communities is not a lack of goods, services, or talent. It is a lack of a medium of exchange. When you give communities a way to trade what they already have, remarkable things happen — without aid dependency, without interest, without banks.
⏱️ Episode Guide:
- 0:00 — From particle physics to community currency: Will's journey
- 0:X:XX — What community inclusion currencies are and how they work
- 0:X:XX — Bangla-Pesa and Sarafu: from pilot to 60,000 households
- 0:X:XX — Blockchain and scaling community currencies globally
- 0:X:XX — Ancient mutual aid and the economics of commitment pooling
- 0:X:XX — What this model means for development finance and impact investing
👤 About Will RuddickWill Ruddick is a development economist and founder of Grassroots Economics Foundation. After completing graduate school researching high energy physics at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, he pivoted to alternative economics and development. Since 2008 he has lived in East Africa managing programmes in environment, food security, and economic development. Schumacher Center for a New Economics He has pioneered Community Inclusion Currency programmes in Kenya since 2010, founding the award-winning Sarafu Network and Bangla-Pesa, and consults worldwide with partners including the World Food Programme and the Red Cross. Schumacher Center for a New Economics His programmes now reach over 80 communities across Kenya, Cameroon, and South Africa.
For anyone working in development finance, financial inclusion, or alternative economics — this episode is essential listening.
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