Subsidies aren't bad?

Depends on who you are. If you're Malawi, it turned out to be the answer, the way out of the poverty trap.

The lesson here is not to ignore the experts, as the article's title says, but to work to your situation, not someone else's expectations and desires. Those experts Malawi was ignoring? The ones that said subsidies and big government would sink a poor country? They wanted Malawi to spend less of their (loaned) money. Most people could tell you, though, that sometimes a little more money spent is worth it in the long run.