# Joe Studwell on How Africa Works

An episode of [The Africa Urban Lab Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1886680160), 20 Mar 2026, 1 h 15 min.

Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2604291/episodes/18875675-joe-studwell-on-how-africa-works.mp3

Our first guest is Joe Studwell — development scholar and author of the landmark How Asia Works — who has just published his long-awaited follow-up book, How Africa Works. We dig into the book's central arguments: why dense cities are essential to building functional markets, how urbanization can actually boost agricultural productivity, and why population density is the key to affordable infrastructure at scale. It's a conversation that challenges some persistent assumptions about African development. Enjoy the show.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker: Welcome to the Africa Urban Lab Podcast.
[0:02] Speaker: I'm your host, Kurtis Lockhart.
[0:03] Speaker: Today I'm chatting with Joe Studwell, author of several books, including the influential book, How Asia Works, and his new How Africa Works, which we talked to him about today in depth.
[0:15] Speaker: Enjoy the show.
[0:16] Speaker: All right, Joe Studwell.
[0:18] Speaker: Welcome to the podcast.
[0:19] Speaker: Thank you very much.
[0:20] Speaker: It's a pleasure to be here.
[0:22] Speaker: Okay, so so you got a new book out, How Africa Works.
[0:25] Speaker: It uh follows up on your fantastic 2013 book, How Asia Works.
[0:30] Speaker: So let's just start off here having you briefly summarize the main message of the new book, and uh then we'll dive into things.
[0:39] Speaker 3: Well, the main uh message uh took a took a long time to because I went back through the Africa literature and I all the stuff that you've probably read about how it's all governance failure and corruption and kleptocracy and civil strife and ethnic conflict.
[0:58] Speaker 3: But I read all that stuff and I just thought I felt that I was reading a lot of kind of proximate explanations.
[1:04] Speaker 3: They weren't really fundamental explanations of why lagged in developmental terms.
[1:11] Speaker 3: And eventually in the sort of 60s and the 50s, I got back one or two people, and it really was only one or two people who wrote about African demographics and said, you know, is absolutely constrained because it just doesn't have enough people.
[1:26] Speaker 3: And um there are very good reasons why you can't develop without enough people because you don't have markets, you don't have dense markets, your infrastructure costs in a in a continent as vast as Africa are unbearably high, right?
[1:43] Speaker 3: The cost of a road when you've got too few people, you can't amortize it across a sufficiently big population.
[1:49] Speaker 3: You don't have the division of labor, um, you don't um a number of other things that are usually put under the by under the rubric of agglomeration economies.
[2:00] Speaker 3: Um so none of that was there.
[2:04] Speaker 3: I mean, if you go back to 1960, across the whole continent, um, average demographic density in Africa um was the same as Europe, estimates of Europe in 1500, right?
[2:17] Speaker 3: So how much growth was there in Europe in 1500?
[2:19] Speaker 3: I mean, there wasn't any, right?
[2:22] Speaker 3: And sure enough, after 1960, Africa didn't do a great job growing.
[2:27] Speaker 3: So the book says, you know, we've got to uh refocus on the story.
[2:33] Speaker 3: And if we look at the growth in population in Africa, really kicks off from the 50s when the disease burden is begins to be brought under control, right?
[2:43] Speaker 3: With new drugs, with more screening for sleeping sickness and and and whatever, with more vaccination.
[2:50] Speaker 3: Um, and it's not about uh people um having more kids of their own volition, it's about a reduction in the infant death right?
[3:00] Speaker 3: That's why the population has grown in Africa.
[3:02] Speaker 3: And that takes us forward then to today when we are close now uh to the population density of about 50 people per where Asia was in 1960, just when Asia began to take off.
[3:18] Speaker 3: So the big overarching message in the book is you know, got to understand the demographic story to understand why has had the experience that it's had since the independent era began in the late 50s and early 60s.
[3:38] Speaker: And and then so you tell you tell that demographic story kind of right at the start and you return to it at the end.
[3:44] Speaker: Um, but can we can we also uh give a brief overview of kind of the three big kind of policy recipe items that you spend a of the book talking about?
[3:53] Speaker: And you spent a lot of the How Asia Works book talking about as well around agriculture, around manufacturing and around uh of finance, the financial sector.
[4:04] Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, sure.
[4:04] Speaker 3: I've always done a lot of work on agriculture because in a country, definitionally, agriculture employs three-quarters of the population.
[4:13] Speaker 3: So what happens in agriculture is enormously important for the bulk of the population.
[4:18] Speaker 3: Um, I then believe that manufacturing is the only way that can move quickly to a much more developed status, and that basically because manufacturing upgrades the skill the population in the way that you can't afford to do for because to get value-added services, you need big in education and training that poor comp poor countries just can't afford to pay for.
[4:44] Speaker 3: Whereas in manufacturing, it's much more that you start off in a in a textile mill and you end up, you know, in an assembly or whatever, but you can be paid by the employer the whole way through that you're you're learning.
[4:58] Speaker 3: So that manufacturing factories in in East Asia have been been the schools and colleges for many, for many, many Um so the book looks at the story there and it makes the that exactly what you would expect with greater population appears to be happening in Africa in agriculture.
[5:21] Speaker 3: Because when, as a rule of thumb, if you get a bit of a bit of GDP growth, when population doubles, demand for food will triple.
[5:31] Speaker 3: And this is exactly what has been happening in Africa.
[5:34] Speaker 3: So, of course, you know, this has made in the over the last sort of two, three, four decades, begun to make farming quite profitable if you're close to um a city or a town where solid, reliable uh demand.
[5:51] Speaker 3: And so you see now a lot more um farmer irrigated um around towns and cities and yields going up.
[6:03] Speaker 3: I mean, yields go up by virtue essentially of irrigation and fertilizer application.
[6:08] Speaker 3: And although fertilizer application across Africa is still you know, only around 20 kilos per hectare, there are people around cities in Africa who are happily putting 200, 300, kilos per hectare on their land, just as they do, just as do in East Asian uh countries.
[6:27] Speaker 3: So Africa, I think we're seeing exactly what we would expect.
[6:31] Speaker 3: And when you go downstream from what's happening in you see the booming growth of agricultural processing, bit of agriculture, and you see the booming growth of foods, right?
[6:47] Speaker 3: I mean, you it's it doesn't really matter where you go Africa now, it's quite hard to find people, you know, their own maize.
[6:56] Speaker 3: Um, okay, if you go into the far, far rural areas, but if around cities or in cities, people are are consuming um foods.
[7:07] Speaker 3: And that, of course, requires all this value addition in factories that process the food.
[7:13] Speaker 3: So that's the agriculture bit.
[7:16] Speaker 3: The manufacturing bit is much more sketchy at the moment.
[7:20] Speaker 3: You know, manufacturing share of GDP in Africa is only about 11%.
[7:26] Speaker 3: It needs to be a lot higher.
[7:29] Speaker 3: Um, and what I say in the book is that you can go to certain manufacturing enclaves, you know, for instance, the the enclave in Madagascar or the garmenting enclave in Lesotho, or to the foreign invested manufacturing enclave in um, in uh Morocco, and there's no problem um with the capabilities in these places.
[7:57] Speaker 3: I mean, the firms are making money and the firms are able grow, but it's just a few cases.
[8:04] Speaker 3: And what we need to see is the development of manufacturing across Africa.
[8:08] Speaker 3: And there I make the point that you know the politicians don't seem to be invested in this at the moment.
[8:15] Speaker 3: They don't seem to kind of get it, or at least they they want to confront that you just you just don't move fast a manufacturing sector.
[8:26] Speaker 3: Um, a lot of people seem to think that somehow services will will do it.
[8:32] Speaker 3: But it's uh this is a kind of a dangerous mindset because gonna put you in the same place that India was for a very long time compared with China, where the Chinese took manufacturing very, very seriously and and the Indian uh government did And even though India today is growing faster, um, but is still less than a fifth of the size of the Chinese with the same with the same population, right?
[9:00] Speaker 3: So that's the price of that mistake in policy terms.
[9:03] Speaker 3: Um and then the final part is finance, where you know the Asian lesson is that you make finance serve your objectives in agriculture and manufacturing.
[9:13] Speaker 3: Um and I make the point that that is quite difficult in now because um with the structural adjustment programs, most African uh countries privatize their banking systems.
[9:27] Speaker 3: And when you privatize, when you fully privatize your system, what you get is banks that focus on consumer Because consumer finance is the most profitable thing to do for banks and the easiest thing.
[9:40] Speaker 3: I mean, it's essentially just software that tells you who, know, whether this person should get the motorcycle loan or not, right?
[9:47] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[9:47] Speaker 3: But it does not help you uh grow a manufacturing economy, not supporting your farm economy.
[9:53] Speaker 3: Um, so laissez-faire in a developing country in finance, I suggest, is a is a very dangerous thing.
[10:03] Speaker 3: Um however, I mean, there are things that can still be done.
[10:08] Speaker 3: And I talked, for instance, about Rwanda, which, IMF advice, privatized its banks, but has um set out to um a publicly owned um investment bank to provide long-term to um, you know, major developmental objectives.
[10:29] Speaker 3: So there are a lot, if you're willing to engage and be a solver, there's plenty of stuff that can still be done in in Africa.
[10:40] Speaker 3: Um but you know, the thing is, I would say that most of good stuff that's coming out of Africa at the moment is out of the private sector and ordinary people and smallholder farmers.
[10:54] Speaker 3: It's not coming from from governments.
[10:57] Speaker 3: And we and we need to see, we still need to see the and application of governance improve.
[11:05] Speaker 3: Um but in some places I think there is evidence of that.
[11:09] Speaker 3: I mean in Nigeria, I think, you know, governance looks to to have improved.
[11:14] Speaker 3: It's coming, it's coming from a very low base, but it's better.
[11:19] Speaker: Yeah.
[11:19] Speaker: Got rid of the fuel subsidies and had to endure a few of pain as a result.
[11:24] Speaker: But I wanted so I wanted to back up a bit and maybe maybe zoom out because I think for 2026, right?
[11:31] Speaker: This book is coming out at the beginning of 2026, these around a kind of slightly more intervention in agriculture and manufacturing and uh the financial sector, they're a little they're a little more mainstream today.
[11:47] Speaker: But I would say when you first wrote how Asia Works back in um this was less common stance, right?
[11:57] Speaker: Like advocating for much more industrial policy and in agriculture, manufacturing, finance.
[12:03] Speaker: Um the the more policy orthodoxy at the time that the IMF the World Bank were advocating was these more Washington policies.
[12:12] Speaker: You mentioned structural adjustment, you mentioned kind of Um, and at the time, around 2013, you had some smattering of a few for like Justin Lynn was chief economist at the bank, I and had just left in 2012 or 2013, right when your book came and some other heterodox economists, but it was not common, And so I'm curious, like number one, when you wrote that was it an active kind of writing approach where you were against these Washington consensus policies?
[12:46] Speaker: And then number two, um, in the decade plus since the of that book, right, industrial policies become much, of a mainstream part of the story of how economic growth Did you, did you kind of in the decade plus since publication play an active role in that that sort of transition to policy becoming more mainstream?
[13:09] Speaker 3: Um I mean to take the the the second one first.
[13:13] Speaker 3: I don't think I did play that much of an active role, but were sort of odd things that happened.
[13:18] Speaker 3: The the start of the Africa book, oddly enough, was the and the Rwandans both inviting me to go out and spend time see what they were doing.
[13:30] Speaker 3: And and my initial response was, you know, this is I don't know anything about Africa.
[13:35] Speaker 3: And they said, Well, it doesn't matter, you don't need to anything about Africa, we want to know more about Asia.
[13:41] Speaker 3: Um, and I did that, and it was kind of sort of seeing, you seeing in those two countries that there were civil who are like really serious about development and very educated and in educated in the sense of knowing the literature, right?
[13:58] Speaker 3: Because there's a if you're if you're if you're if you're hungry, I mean the great thing these days is a massive literature um out there that you can uh consume in order to help you think about what to do in your own because what you do in your own country will never be the same, but it it gets you thinking to to look at what people did.
[14:22] Speaker: Yeah.
[14:22] Speaker: No, and I I mean I'd reading your especially your like uh under Melazinawe, you know, skimming his uh thesis he wrote, I think, while in power, um, like looking at that big bibliography, that's a huge huge who's who of like developmental ideas across the decades.
[14:39] Speaker: And then the fact it wasn't just him, he had a bunch of his and senior leaders of the Ethiopian regime also studying these same things uh was was, I think, a revelation.
[14:52] Speaker: And to your point of of kind of the governance part being binding constraint in places like Ethiopia, where you have leadership, you can get it seems a lot done on the policy front relatively quickly.
[15:07] Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, Ethiopia was just like the Japanese in the century, where the whole thing kicked off in Asia, right?
[15:13] Speaker 3: When they decided that they were gonna go and look at the and look at Belgium and look at look at France and look at and they taught, I mean, and the politicians, you know, you couldn't fly, the politicians disappeared for like, know, a year plus on these kinds of research, on these of research trips.
[15:32] Speaker 3: Um so I think, yeah, it was very like that.
[15:36] Speaker 3: And that was very much sort of Melissa's attitude.
[15:38] Speaker 3: And I I think it's the correct one, you know.
[15:40] Speaker 3: You've got to you've got to have that um attitude of problems being soluble.
[15:47] Speaker 3: Um, you know, this is why like engineers are often very good um people to have around in development, developmental you know, because engineers are problem solvers, And that, you know, your basic engineer is a generalist.
[16:03] Speaker 3: Um when you say, you know, how are we going to do this?
[16:07] Speaker 3: They'll think it through and they'll have a usually have a idea.
[16:11] Speaker 3: Um the the other question that you asked, Curtis, or the first question that you'd asked there was about, you know, was I against the the orthodox consensus?
[16:20] Speaker 3: I absolutely not.
[16:22] Speaker 3: Um, I mean, I was just um describing what I believed had in East Asia in the East Asia book.
[16:31] Speaker 3: Um, you know, I'd read what some of the IMF and World Bank publications claimed had happened, um, but it just didn't fit with what I had um with what I'd seen uh living in in East and and you know uh and and studying development.
[16:53] Speaker 3: Um but I wasn't, yeah, I wasn't I wasn't out to get the uh view by any by by by any means.
[17:04] Speaker 3: I was just trying to write you know what I think is an um uh an accurate view of development in East Asia.
[17:13] Speaker 3: And of course there was a very funny um review of the book in in The Economist, which is really pretty orthodox in its in its economics.
[17:22] Speaker 3: And and and and it was an absolutely glowing review, but it began by saying, of course, this newspaper cannot agree most of what he says.
[17:34] Speaker 3: Um but I you know I thought that was I thought that was than many.
[17:40] Speaker: Yeah.
[17:40] Speaker: Um okay, so so you chatted a bit about um demographics and sort of the emergence more recently and especially moving century of urban centers being a sort of game changer, and you can get there Africa will soon reach the threshold of of densities that that Asia had in in 1960 and the next few here, which is when things start to get interesting and and and kick off.
[18:04] Speaker: Obviously, I'm at the Africa Urban Lab, so what we care a about um the rapid urban transition that we're seeing across continent.
[18:11] Speaker: Um, on this theme, right?
[18:14] Speaker: I I kind of want you to tell me like if this is if this is if you agree with this.
[18:19] Speaker: I see your book as somewhat pushing back against the Lewis model a bit, right?
[18:25] Speaker: Arthur Lewis famously won a Nobel Prize for this dual sector where the urban industrial sector accumulates capital, which labor demand and and pulls basically in his model infinite agricultural workers out of agriculture and into the modern And you're you're kind of saying number one, Africa didn't basically infinite surplus agricultural labor.
[18:52] Speaker: Uh and and I think interestingly, you've you've touched Interestingly, number two, you're saying actually urban demand provides the markets and incentives for making the to increase agricultural productivity.
[19:08] Speaker: And you already mentioned, especially in these farms nearby and proximate to cities, right?
[19:13] Speaker: Um whereas basically Lewis sees the rural sector as sort of and unresponsive.
[19:20] Speaker: Um and I know in the book you have some stories about these professionals by day who are also like great farmers on the the side.
[19:29] Speaker: So can you can you tell some of these stories?
[19:33] Speaker 3: Yeah, so I mean I think I think that yeah, I'm not I'm not aligned with Lewis, but I think that what Lewis wrote at the time he wrote it for for a population-dense society was and useful.
[19:48] Speaker 3: But you're right, it's not terribly helpful in Africa.
[19:51] Speaker 3: And of course, all of these things are simplifications allow us to kind of make points about life, which is that more complex and more messy.
[20:04] Speaker 3: Um, but yes, I think that uh for me, you know, and and in what we see is that the development of cities and the of towns provides a type of demand that agriculture has never had before on the continent.
[20:22] Speaker 3: So I mean, if you go back to 1900, the two biggest cities in Africa uh were Dar and Lagos with populations of 20,000 right?
[20:35] Speaker 3: 20,000 people does not move the needle.
[20:38] Speaker 3: But these days, you know, when you've got um so many popul uh so many cities, uh, you know, not including in Tanzania of a million people, that provides very uh robust demand to peripheral area, to the rural per peripheral area where you can get into the city um fairly quickly, where you can vegetables and fruits that don't you know that don't don't terribly well and have to go to market quickly and be consumed quickly.
[21:13] Speaker 3: So, you know, all of that um has been has been happening and isn't extremely important.
[21:20] Speaker 3: And then as you say, one of the kind of weird things, it's weird in the sense that it's you don't see it in East Asia, is that rather usually in these periurban areas of high yield agriculture, you know, in um in East Asia, all the action be coming from smallholder farmers.
[21:41] Speaker 3: Um in Africa, partly because governments have been pretty at supporting smallholder farmers.
[21:48] Speaker 3: I mean, they'll say, you know, there's a fertilizer there's free fertilizer, whatever, whatever, but it all gets larger scale farmers usually, or almost all gets taken by I mean, there's just You know, people, it's quite, I mean, to my mind, it's quite a kind of aristocratic view, the the African one, right?
[22:07] Speaker 3: It's like just I mean, people, you know, politics just relate to ordinary people very well.
[22:13] Speaker 3: Um so what you see, um, and Tanzanian cities are you know, example when you go and wander around um the peri urban looking at the high yield agriculture, is you find not the you would expect to find or you would find in East Asia.
[22:32] Speaker 3: You find, you know, the the the land, you know, there's 10 being farmed by people working for the local police chief.
[22:39] Speaker 3: There's um, you know, 30 hectares being farmed by um the uh guy from the from the driver licensing agency, you know, like all these, or or I mean, in um in in uh in Ghana, they they have an annual like farmer of the year um competition, right?
[23:01] Speaker 3: And it and I point out in the book that a year not far from when I was there, it was won by a primary school teacher who was farming a thousand hectares, right?
[23:11] Speaker 3: I mean it's like and you meet these people, you say, but you know, surely you've got a job.
[23:17] Speaker 3: Oh yeah, but I've got plenty of time, you know, on this And and so that this is the kind of phenomenon um that you really around Africa of these usually urban professionals, people in government jobs.
[23:33] Speaker 3: Um, and sometimes there's a reason for it.
[23:36] Speaker 3: Like in Nigeria, um, agriculture is the only uh thing government, a government civil servant can legally do on the site.
[23:44] Speaker 3: So they're all in it.
[23:47] Speaker 3: Um and it's not developmentally great because you want um the gains spread as broadly as possible that creates an ideal demand for relatively simple and services that you can produce locally.
[24:04] Speaker 3: When you get um when you get income gains narrowly what happens is that they go to people who then spend a high proportion of their money on imports.
[24:17] Speaker 3: You know, so it's a Japanese car, they send their kids to college.
[24:24] Speaker 3: And that doesn't help, that doesn't help your development.
[24:27] Speaker 3: Um, but that is, for better or for worse, the shape of agriculture in in many African, most African countries, I say.
[24:38] Speaker 3: Um and and yeah, and also you know, you get um young um quite highly educated people, who see, you know, farming 15, 20 hectares as as an as an interesting entrepreneurial
[25:00] Speaker: Yeah, and I mean the the stat that stuck out for me on this, this phenomenon of these urban professionals kind of farming the in the periurban areas.
[25:09] Speaker: I think you cited a survey that showed um what it is, it's it was like something like smallholders serving urban markets like 10 times more likely than other farmers to use improved and fertilizer and invest in soil conservation.
[25:24] Speaker: Again, just because they have the incentive because they've this reliable urban market with urban demand, because the there, because they can make money.
[25:34] Speaker 3: Um, and so of course, why not maximize your yield, right?
[25:37] Speaker 3: And because they're also usually, usually I would say, um, in peri-urban areas.
[25:43] Speaker 3: Interesting.
[25:44] Speaker 3: Most of these sort of farmer entrepreneurs tend to be some there's some purchase, but there's a lot of on as well.
[25:53] Speaker 3: So if you're if you're renting the land and you know, land costs, um, oh, I don't know.
[26:02] Speaker 3: I'm trying to remember in Tanzania, maybe $100, they're rented by the season,$100 a season, $150 a season for good land.
[26:11] Speaker 3: But, you know, once you're paying that kind of money, might as well absolutely maximize what you can get off um of the land.
[26:24] Speaker: And just a just a couple more on this demographics question cities.
[26:29] Speaker: In your uh in your conversation about well, it comes up times throughout the book, but like Africa's historical state evolution, you cite you know, Charles Tilley's story of European state formation and and Jeffrey Herbst, who takes Tilly to Africa.
[26:46] Speaker: Um, and this story goes basically something like states make and war make states.
[26:52] Speaker: That's the famous sort of Tillian um synopsis.
[26:54] Speaker: But because in your story of Africa's low population density, not a lot of interstate wars have occurred because people exit, right?
[27:05] Speaker: And so state state building is is stalled.
[27:07] Speaker: But I think I like because I I love Tilly, it's you know, I go back to it pretty frequently.
[27:12] Speaker: I think most people leave out a key part of the like Tillian right?
[27:19] Speaker: The book is called Capital and Coercion, and the capital part is the cities and their role in in financing emerging And so to me, like a more complete version of Tilly's story is yes, states make war and war makes states, but cities fund And you you kind of outline how this is the case in the African context around densities, effects, especially on the viability of infrastructure projects.
[27:47] Speaker: So do you want to go into this kind of um infrastructure story a bit?
[27:53] Speaker 3: Uh you mean in terms of reducing the the the character costruct.
[27:58] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[27:58] Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, uh I uh on financing, um, you know, in terms of what you say and what Tilly says, I think that's kind of I mean, throughout European history, the consolidation was fundamentally connected to the development of because it's much easier to raise tax in cities, and it's easier to borrow money from from financial uh entities.
[28:26] Speaker: And and and urban merchants are more bought into a growing and supportive infrastructure for commerce and
[28:34] Speaker 3: Absolutely.
[28:34] Speaker 3: And and so, you know, Africa so far has had very weak You know, I mean, they meant there's a lot of bluster, but look at what they can actually do, and Africa's had very governments, and so Africa needs to increase tax take.
[28:50] Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know what the Africa, the average for the of Africa is, but I mean, it's basic you're basically looking at between, you know, 10 and 15% of GDP in total fiscal take, which is incredibly low.
[29:02] Speaker 3: Interestingly, it's where where China was um at the end of the 1980s before its growth um began.
[29:08] Speaker 3: And the government has got to become um wealthier in order do more.
[29:15] Speaker 3: And the government has to do a lot in a poor country because it is fundamentally different to a developed country.
[29:23] Speaker 3: And I mean, in a developed country, there's all kinds um repositories of capability, and everyone, you know, and it's it's too complex for government to but in a poor there's a lot of very straightforward stuff that needs to do in agriculture and manufacturing.
[29:41] Speaker 3: Um so all of that's um important.
[29:45] Speaker 3: I just it's just occurred to me.
[29:47] Speaker 3: I mean, another example of uh of why you need cities.
[29:50] Speaker 3: So I mean, if you think about the American, if you think of the US, you think about the American Civil War, um, you a reason why the North won that's not often uh repeated is the North the North had big cities, right?
[30:02] Speaker 3: And the South didn't.
[30:03] Speaker 3: The South had like little towns, and it really hurt the of the Confederates to raise money to fight to fight the Um so yeah, the growth of cities in in um in Africa is very, very important.
[30:22] Speaker 3: And um it and and the reduction in the cost um of is also extremely um important because Africa has need of infrastructure to connect what are still very large spaces, right?
[30:41] Speaker 3: I mean, we can say that Africa's now almost in in density terms where Asia was in 1960, but Asia has since on to triple that demographic density, right?
[30:54] Speaker 3: In in the process of becoming uh uh a wealthy part of the Um so um yeah, that is um hugely important.
[31:06] Speaker 3: The problems in Africa tend to be, and I mean, of course, is I guess your your bread and butter, that it's another that the the development of cities is another thing that haven't really gotten their hands around and haven't that demographic density within cities is extremely important as well.
[31:28] Speaker 3: And if you let them kind of sprawl out, um, then you end up, as you often do in African cities, with with um poor people spending an insane share of uh of their income on off from anything else.
[31:46] Speaker: I think in DAR it's it's they spend on average, this was a years ago, but over like 53% of their daily budget is on uh commute 10, uh which is insane.
[31:58] Speaker 3: It's like you've you've suddenly you've got the population, but you're throwing away the benefit, you know, if you don't if you don't manage urban development um in the in the way is necessary to um to allow more rapid accumulation, tax collection, all this kind of stuff.
[32:17] Speaker: Okay, this is so so this is good.
[32:19] Speaker: We've hit on the demographics a bit, um, and this is at the start.
[32:24] Speaker: Um, there is a bunch of other history you go over in the hundred pages before getting to the four success cases of Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Botswana.
[32:35] Speaker: And, you know, that first hundred pages, I gotta tell you, pretty grim uh reading.
[32:41] Speaker: Um, because you you go over uh basically why Africa has remained um poor for a long, you know, for for a long time in its Uh and there's there's the demographics point, which we've we've already chatted about in depth.
[32:55] Speaker: There's also this, you know, obviously crappy colonial There's there's low education, there's um huge, uh a burden.
[33:04] Speaker: I also didn't know about the elephants, like that was interesting.
[33:08] Speaker 3: Uh and then and then there's Kazania was one of the worst for elephants, right?
[33:13] Speaker 3: For for kind of elephant devastation of farmland.
[33:16] Speaker: What was the can you say the number just for listeners?
[33:18] Speaker: I forget the exact 25 million, was it?
[33:21] Speaker 3: Yeah, that's bad.
[33:22] Speaker 3: That's the estimate for 1800, right?
[33:24] Speaker 3: There's 25 million elephants.
[33:27] Speaker: So if you're a farmer, if you're a farmer, you're gonna have times growing crusts.
[33:32] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[33:32] Speaker 2: I mean, have you, you know, have you tried kind of waving stick at a bull elephant?
[33:39] Speaker: Yeah, so okay.
[33:39] Speaker: The point is uh, you know, a ton of these uh um factors that uh economic development.
[33:46] Speaker: I didn't ethnic division in in like pretty artificially drawn states is another issue.
[33:52] Speaker: And so reading through this, the first hundred pages, it it seems daunting.
[33:57] Speaker: But the book, I think, in in stressing the importance of decisions, right, and policy reform really says that these can be overcome with with human agency, right?
[34:10] Speaker: And so my my question is what are the like pressures or or broader structural trends, I think beyond the demographic stuff we've already talked about, that are improving the possibilities of overcoming these historical endowments?
[34:28] Speaker 3: Well, uh, you know, once you start to get a bit of growth, people become uh more optimistic about having a better in 10 years.
[34:37] Speaker 3: And actually, already when you survey people in Africa, more optimistic than people in Europe, you know, about gonna be in in 15 years.
[34:47] Speaker 3: So that's a very um a very positive um change.
[34:52] Speaker 3: Um and you know, then I think other things, you know, moving in favor of development would include, I think the African is in somewhat better shape um than it was a decade or two um, that Africa is becoming a little more cooperative.
[35:13] Speaker 3: And I think a lot of development is probably going to if it's if it's possible, you know, if the uh if the free area can actually get delivered, I think a lot of is gonna come through um through that.
[35:30] Speaker 3: Because you people tend naturally to think, well, Africa's to export.
[35:35] Speaker 3: Africa does have to export, but you can export within right?
[35:40] Speaker 3: So you've already got 1.5 uh billion people.
[35:44] Speaker 3: 2050, you're gonna have 2.5 billion people.
[35:48] Speaker 3: And that's a hell of a market.
[35:50] Speaker 3: And as GDP rises, it also gives you negotiating power with the rest of the world.
[35:55] Speaker 3: And when we get, you know, going towards the end of this you're gonna have two dominant demographic blocks.
[36:02] Speaker 3: There'll be Asia, which will already have dropped from 5 to 4 billion, because many Asian countries, including most China, are now depopulating quite quickly.
[36:12] Speaker 3: Um, and then you'll have Africa at 4 billion, and the rest of the world will be, will be 2 billion.
[36:18] Speaker 3: Well, that means that Africa's gonna have a big place at international table, you know, even though even if even it will probably still be relatively significantly poorer than than than elsewhere.
[36:29] Speaker 3: And I think a lot of growth uh in the manufacturing be achieved in Africa through the growth of intra-African Mm-hmm.
[36:43] Speaker: Okay, so this is great.
[36:44] Speaker: So on to some other questions, right?
[36:46] Speaker: Um, one of the things I I picked up in the book, you're pretty pessimistic on mining because it doesn't create a lot of
[36:55] Speaker 3: Um but let me I'm not I mean, Curtis, I wouldn't I wouldn't say that I'm I'm p I'm pessimistic.
[37:02] Speaker 3: If anybody thinks that it's going to be be transformative, pessimistic.
[37:06] Speaker 3: But I'm not saying don't mine.
[37:08] Speaker 3: I mean, you know, if you can make money out of mining, I'm just making a very obvious point that it does not jobs.
[37:15] Speaker 3: And it's and it's kind of cut off.
[37:17] Speaker 3: Yeah, and every year it creates it creates fewer and fewer because of because of increased mechanization.
[37:25] Speaker 3: Um so you know, I'm just saying don't that's not the solution to having to generate employment for these millions of new who come into the market each year.
[37:41] Speaker: Right.
[37:41] Speaker: But on this point of um mechanization, right, is there a argument made?
[37:49] Speaker: I I think it's actually being made right by some economists that um manufacturing factories in 2026 and beyond, more capital-intensive beasts and and less labor-intensive they used to be.
[38:03] Speaker: So their job creation potential is also a lot less kind of a similar problem as as you lay out with with mining.
[38:11] Speaker: Like I think Danny Roderick, for example, writes on of premature deindustrialization, right?
[38:18] Speaker 3: Yeah, I I don't um I don't buy that.
[38:22] Speaker 3: And I I talked briefly with Danny Roderick and he read the And he was very positive, actually.
[38:27] Speaker 3: Um, but on that point, we we have to sort of agree to to In in in my view, you know, two things are kind of usually out of the conversation about robotics in manufacturing and AI in manufacturing.
[38:41] Speaker 3: You know, one is a simple question of cost.
[38:44] Speaker 3: I mean, people talk about robotics as if you just get the for free.
[38:49] Speaker 3: You don't, you have to buy it, right?
[38:50] Speaker 3: And um, robots in factories cost a lot of money.
[38:54] Speaker 3: Um, you know, so if you're in a garmenting uh factory, actually do a lot with robots in garmenting factories material isn't rigid, and so robots find it hard very hard.
[39:07] Speaker 3: But there are some things that you can do, but you know, a robotic um machine in a garmenting factory will be $100,000.
[39:16] Speaker 3: So I'm gonna spend$100,000 on doll on that, which I've to spend up front in when I'm in um Madagascar and I can get like hire or fire labor for $65 a month.
[39:31] Speaker 3: You know, that's skilled labor in terms of garmenting and who've been doing this for years, and I I don't see why are gonna start um, you know, taking a much more approach when labor costs are what they now are in Africa as a result of population growth.
[39:53] Speaker 3: Um and the second thing is that um robots are actually inflexible, right?
[40:01] Speaker 3: You you set up a production line and it has a given and if you get extra demand, you you can't suddenly magic another robot and stick it in there.
[40:11] Speaker 3: I mean, that's basically what your production line is.
[40:14] Speaker 3: And equally, you know, if you don't have um if you don't have uh demand, you're still paying, you know, the debt cost of these robots.
[40:24] Speaker 3: Whereas when you've got people, you you know, you hire them in or you fire them.
[40:29] Speaker 3: And I'm saying that in Africa, but it's it's not only in that we see it.
[40:33] Speaker 3: I mean, um, you know, for instance, with um, you know, blind warehouses um and supermarkets during COVID when ordering food to be delivered at home in Europe and the people with uh with blind warehouses and robots to pick out really suffered because they couldn't they couldn't up to the higher level of demand.
[40:59] Speaker 3: Um so I th I think like as with all technological um moments of progress, the progress is real, but you get this kind of conversation that takes place among techies that is kind of divorced from the real world.
[41:20] Speaker 3: Um and and then, you know, probably 15 years later or what they were saying becomes more applicable.
[41:30] Speaker 3: So I I I I don't think that there's a problem um for Africa to have a manufacturing sector um if you're suggesting that it will, you know, uh and and compete successfully with highly capitalized robot-operated factories.
[41:49] Speaker: Interesting.
[41:49] Speaker: Um I I I just get just continuing on manufacturing, you a lot about the use of industrial parks, I mean, especially particular cases like um Ethiopia, but there are also special economic zones where in the Mershin case, slightly in the case.
[42:07] Speaker: Um I'm less sure about Botswana, but in in your reading, are the most common or like fatal errors that African make when setting up and operationalizing these special zones?
[42:23] Speaker 3: Well, I think you know, to imagine that you just you just of put a fence around a zone and um and and and all these businesses will arrive and it will take off.
[42:33] Speaker 3: I mean, you know, a zone has to be, if it's gonna work, it to be planned in integration with port services, um, road transport, um, so on and and and and so forth.
[42:48] Speaker 3: And I think there's there have been quite a lot of zone, zones have been done in the past um in Africa that are not planned.
[42:58] Speaker 3: And then, of course, you get the problem where you get more sort of federal um polities like Nigeria, where you get put in places that you're not going to put them for reasons, but they get put there for federal reasons, right?
[43:15] Speaker 3: Because everybody's got to have one.
[43:17] Speaker 3: And um, you know, and it was like and but this isn't a purely um this isn't a purely African problem where you do get a lot of sort of federal political uh arrangements and other similar things.
[43:36] Speaker 3: I mean, it was the same in China at the point at which at Deng Xiaoping said um that some must get rich first, you which seems like seems like self evident uh to people in in Europe and the US, but was a very radical thing to say um China at the time because you know.
[43:59] Speaker 3: Chinese socialism said that no, we're all going to get rich together.
[44:03] Speaker 3: But you know, Dung came out and said, no, that hasn't So we'll have to some will have to get rich first.
[44:10] Speaker: Do you uh because having studied both um the Asian case and African case, do you have a sense about why Asian zones were like so much more successful than they've been across continent, spurring like industrial firm growth and and job It's it you can't really compare the success stories.
[44:30] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[44:30] Speaker 3: I mean, the build okay.
[44:31] Speaker 3: So first of all, they were fully integrated with port and road services.
[44:36] Speaker 3: I mean, if you go back to the early American semiconductor that were lured into Singapore, you know, it was all very set up for them so that the whole thing was clearly going to work.
[44:50] Speaker 3: Um, and beyond that, the creation of zones um you know followed the growth of outsourcing of manufacturing um into Asia.
[45:04] Speaker 3: So it was kind of going with the grain of the wood.
[45:07] Speaker 3: Whereas, you know, in Africa, it tended in the past to be case that countries were saying, well, we just build a zone and then we'll get all the foreign investment.
[45:15] Speaker 3: But actually, you know, are there a lot of other reasons companies didn't want to uh come and and invest in Africa?
[45:25] Speaker 3: And you know, one was one was um was labor cost, which only really in the last 10, 15, just uh, you know, in the course of this century, it's only then that labor cost has has to become genuinely attractive in Africa and again a you a function of the of the demographic story.
[45:48] Speaker: I I'll point listeners to um some research by um Susan Frick, and there's a couple other Andres uh Andreas uh Rodriguez Poes and a few others on they had a data set of like 350 zones uh the globe.
[46:05] Speaker: I think it was 22 uh low and low lower middle income Um the two, I think the only two um factors that were like predictive of uh growth, and it growth was proxied by data um luminosity within these within these zones over a of time.
[46:25] Speaker: The only two predictive factors across a bunch of models uh proximity to urban markets, again, similar to this you've already told.
[46:33] Speaker: Um the zones closer to the cities tended to do better.
[46:36] Speaker: This this is kind of your connective to port infrastructure whatnot and existing labor pools.
[46:42] Speaker: And then the second one was size.
[46:45] Speaker: So the larger the zone, the better.
[46:47] Speaker: And this is I I think I take the sec the second point on to mean some smaller zones, like even single factory zones, that to me is just a rent seeking like a way to funnel than be serious about and so the larger the zone, the more kind of probably less to do with rent seeking and corruption and more like seriously trying to pursue industrial firm uh What are your what are your thoughts?
[47:13] Speaker 3: Yeah, I I think that that makes um I think that that makes Um but I also think that the you know the aggression with a government goes out and markets um zones is going to make a difference too.
[47:33] Speaker 3: Um, you know, before the Civil War, you know, I think that Ethiopians did a pretty good job.
[47:40] Speaker 3: I mean, there were there were some things I didn't agree They did have some zones that were positioned for federal you know.
[47:49] Speaker 3: Um but generally uh they made sure that the utilities and the infrastructure were aligned with the development of And then they went out and did a very hard sell.
[48:04] Speaker 3: Uh, you know, and they filled up, for instance, Hawassa, is quite a big zone, um, filled it up very quickly.
[48:15] Speaker 3: So, you know, again, I think that I think that this stuff is is doable um in Africa.
[48:24] Speaker 3: What what concerns me is you know whether countries are gonna develop the bureaucratic capacity um quickly enough to to get these things done when they when they really need to be in terms of generating employment.
[48:43] Speaker 3: Um but I mean, you know, again, you can look at uh Rwanda, can look at Ethiopia, and over a period of 10 to 20 years, created, you know, very focused bureaucracies, you know, really have that kind of developmental state feel.
[49:05] Speaker 3: Everybody's everybody's getting shit done, basically.
[49:10] Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
[49:10] Speaker: Mellis called it like he knew he wants to make development right?
[49:13] Speaker: Like that was the term.
[49:14] Speaker: Yeah.
[49:15] Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
[49:15] Speaker: Yeah.
[49:16] Speaker: Um a couple things on we we talked about manufacturing, a couple things on the agriculture side.
[49:22] Speaker: So, first on on land reform, you're you're obviously big fan, as you've already mentioned, of smallholder both on in the Asia book and and this one, because smaller basically you call it gardening, um, are found to grow hectare than than large farms.
[49:40] Speaker: So then by that logic, redistributing land from large to small ones should uh increase productivity and output.
[49:48] Speaker: Um my my main thing with land reform is that right, it's it's incredibly politically difficult sometimes, um, even for dedicated elites, right?
[50:00] Speaker: So in your in your in your East Asian examples, um in the in Asia book, these places, I think by and large had the like most successful land reforms at scale anywhere on the globe.
[50:13] Speaker: And I think a big a big reason for their success was they in essence like externally imposed, right?
[50:21] Speaker: Japan was under General Marshall, South Korea, also by the US, Taiwan, by the the KMT.
[50:26] Speaker: Um so so given a lot of the successful land reforms were kind of force-fed to these um these countries by external Does that does this sort of give you pause on its political in Africa?
[50:44] Speaker 3: Well, it it's not required in Africa, right?
[50:46] Speaker 3: Because um there are very few, still very few landless I mean, there will be more going forward because of the of land by urban professionals that we were talking Um, but there's not a major um land ownership issue and issue.
[51:08] Speaker 3: And in the book, I mean, I mentioned Che Guevara turning up in the 60s in in DRC to start a revolution.
[51:16] Speaker 3: And then, you know, he says, he says, you know, take me to landless peasants.
[51:21] Speaker 3: And he said, What?
[51:22] Speaker 3: We haven't put any landless peasants.
[51:23] Speaker 3: Everyone's got land.
[51:24] Speaker 3: He he so you go, I write in his diaries.
[51:28] Speaker 3: I mean, how am I supposed to start a revolution?
[51:30] Speaker 3: Um and you know, I mean, and then I mean, well, the World estimate is that half of the of the of the globe's um unused but cultivable land is is is in Africa.
[51:46] Speaker 3: Um so the very few places in Africa that you could even begin to make a case for land reform.
[51:54] Speaker 3: The one where there was a case for land reform, and it was by the Labour Party um in the 1950s, was in Mauritius.
[52:01] Speaker 3: Um and they were contemplating land reform because had these Franco-Mauritian sugar barons with of hectares, and um large numbers of other people who'd been in ethnic Indians who'd been imported as indentured labor to work on the sugar plantations, who didn't, you know, after independence, wanted some land of their own.
[52:28] Speaker 3: Um, but they uh decided that they would not um carve up the sugar estates, but what they did instead was to tax sugar um very heavily and also to create a a single entity to export all sugar because the sugar barons in the past had tended take their money offshore and then invest in South Africa and wherever.
[52:51] Speaker 3: So they stopped that.
[52:52] Speaker 3: All the sugar had to go through the sugar export agency, so all the money came into the sugar export agency, and they it, and the tax went up to about 26% of gross value, which a hell of a tax.
[53:04] Speaker 3: Um, and then they used that to they used them, they used money for a number of things, but they but they used it to in part to um finance the development of manufacturing policy, and then they gave the sugar barons very attractive tax if they would go and make garments.
[53:22] Speaker 3: Um and it was great.
[53:25] Speaker 3: It worked, it was just classic East Asian policy, you know, carrot and stick, um and worked, yeah, worked fantastically well.
[53:36] Speaker 3: I mean, the sugar barons hated it initially, and uh, you the old ones can still remember what it was like and still about how mistreated they were, but it pushed them into and they then ended up in the end with far bigger businesses than they had before.
[53:54] Speaker: I guess then instead of land reform in the African case, let's just call it land regularization, right?
[54:00] Speaker: Because even registering like I think you know, Rwanda has a super successful national land regularization drive.
[54:08] Speaker: I think they did in 2008 to 2012 or something like that.
[54:13] Speaker: They registered like 11 million plots across the country for bucks a parcel, it's like amazing.
[54:18] Speaker: But other than that, I can't like Tanzania still only has its land registered properly, right?
[54:27] Speaker 3: And so I I don't think that that is a priority personally.
[54:31] Speaker 3: I don't think it's a priority, but you know that like um is basically a fashion business and it's been uh it'soto the the land, the private property.
[54:42] Speaker 3: Yeah, so um land rights and and land um um land has been just like a huge kind of fashion thing in in aid.
[54:55] Speaker 3: I I don't, you know, I mean in some places in Africa where been aid-funded projects, it's kind of done negative things because usually when you have you know communal land and then it's privatized, what happens is that politically most people lay their hands on a disproportionate share of the So it's kind of better having it communal because everyone what established practice um was.
[55:24] Speaker 3: I mean, even in Rwanda, I mean, you know, the British um Office will tell you how fabulously um that went, uh, the the uh demarcation of of land in Rwanda, because they paid for a lot of it.
[55:38] Speaker 3: But if you look at the impact that it's had, um when people um buy and sell land in Rwanda, there's still only a tiny who bother to go to a lawyer.
[55:51] Speaker 3: They just do it, right?
[55:54] Speaker 3: Because it because a lawyer costs money, you know, and are people are so um cost sensitive that they'd rather kind of take a bit of a chance that it'll be okay than pay a lawyer to give them something that they could, you know, to give a contract that they could more easily take to court.
[56:17] Speaker: Yeah.
[56:17] Speaker: And I I buy this, you know, I've become less of a kind of of land fundamentalists after reading more of the Asian because like none of the, like, you know, Ch China had had uh uh all land is owned by publicly.
[56:32] Speaker: And um they what they did under Dung post 1978, I guess with a few areas and then slowly rolling it out, was like you know, land leasing, leasing use rights to land.
[56:47] Speaker: They didn't have sort of fully private kind of freehold land the sense that is known in Europe and North America, but they leased out the use rights to that land for the yeah.
[56:56] Speaker 3: Yeah, you can exactly you can lease the use rights now, but also pretty much everyone who farms in China now has like a piece of paper from the government that says that this land that they're farming, you know, and defined in in on the piece of paper that this that this land is theirs um to farm, and it gives them and they and they get a a degree of sort of clarity from from that.
[57:26] Speaker 3: And actually in practice, people say that that turns out to be quite important because it prevents like local coming along and saying, actually, this land doesn't belong to you, it belongs to us.
[57:36] Speaker 3: So we're now going to give it to this Taiwanese company.
[57:41] Speaker: Okay.
[57:41] Speaker: I and just relatedly on on um the I guess this question of land reform, have you read it's a recent, it's some recent research by uh Oliver Kim and some co-authors, um, economists that rigorously go.
[57:55] Speaker: I think they look at the Taiwan case and then they they look mainland China's household responsibility system.
[58:02] Speaker: Um and it suggest the findings suggest that it had a on yields than had originally been thought.
[58:11] Speaker: I'm I'm curious if you'd come across the I have.
[58:16] Speaker 3: So I read it and I think I don't remember if I spoke to him or if I if I had some you know exchanges back and forth.
[58:24] Speaker 3: I mean, I kind of personally I think it's a bit of a thing um because it's what you know what it's saying is the the divvying up of land and land reform didn't affect the yields, the the yield gains came from um fertilizer hybrid seed and whatever.
[58:42] Speaker 3: But you know, what I actually, if you go back to how Asia and and and read what I actually said is that you know the of these things produced these tremendous um yield gains.
[58:55] Speaker 3: And for me, the land reform was not so important on the on the yield side, although if it you know if it something to yields, that's all good.
[59:08] Speaker 3: It was it was ultimately most important in terms of equalize equalizing land ownership and and allowing all these landless people in densely populated East Asian societies to of land and a piece of capital so that they could meaningfully in in capitalism.
[59:28] Speaker 3: And the paper doesn't it doesn't address that.
[59:32] Speaker 3: It doesn't say, you know, is there separately, is there a case for land reform in terms of the the the equality of um asset distribution in a poor society.
[59:46] Speaker: Yeah.
[59:46] Speaker: He's Oliver's great, but he's a great substack, and he just just uh reviewed your book and he had some very nice things to say on it.
[59:53] Speaker: So it just it just came out, I think, literally this I saw it in my inbox.
[59:57] Speaker: So um I I guess while on the topic of Asia still, um and I you mentioned this a little early, but on the on the on the point, I think right you you rightly stress the need for a of Asian-style demographic dividend, right?
[1:00:15] Speaker: A large working-age population.
[1:00:17] Speaker: But um you could also make the case that Asia like very much on demography.
[1:00:24] Speaker: Like most Asian countries are are significantly below Um South Korea is, I think, like the lowest in the world.
[1:00:31] Speaker: Um they're just not having kids, and all of their respective are therefore set to like crater over the next few few So I guess maybe what I'm saying is shouldn't we shouldn't be like a word of caution to up-and-coming governments today not ride the family planning train too, too hard in this um demographic dividend?
[1:00:57] Speaker 3: Um but so getting people to have more kids today is going to encourage those kids to have more kids in the future, you
[1:01:11] Speaker: Um I don't think that's what we're we're not, yeah, we're seeing like encouraging people to have more kids as results more of the future.
[1:01:20] Speaker: It's more like not um tanking the decline in total factor or total fertility rate so quickly as it's as it's declined.
[1:01:32] Speaker 3: Because I think that's it's not gonna happen in Africa, Because governments don't have the capacity to make that Plus, they're not gonna be, they're not gonna go around people like the Chinese did.
[1:01:42] Speaker 3: So in Africa, if it's done, it's gonna be done through female education, which is strongly correlated with reduced um or reduced fertility as a result of uh later um Um and I think it's important because you know the the the demographic dividend in better shape in Africa is very to Africa's chances.
[1:02:08] Speaker 3: So, in other words, having that larger working age relative um in particular to uh to the population of of kids.
[1:02:19] Speaker 3: And then, right, so then you get to uh maybe you know some in Africa will get to China or Korea or Japan's position.
[1:02:31] Speaker 3: But I would say that, you know, at least then you've got rich rich people problems.
[1:02:37] Speaker 3: And rich people problems are definitely better than poor problems.
[1:02:42] Speaker: Fair.
[1:02:42] Speaker: That's fair.
[1:02:43] Speaker: Yeah.
[1:02:44] Speaker: Um let's change gears a little bit.
[1:02:48] Speaker: On the foreign assistance and aid side of things, you kind of touch upon it towards the end of the book, right?
[1:02:54] Speaker: We saw like huge sweeping cuts to foreign aid last year in across high-income countries, especially like you know, of USAID.
[1:03:03] Speaker: Um, so let's say, you know, it's a few years from now, Trump's term is is done, a new president is elected who decides, lo bold, to reinstitute like some version of USAID.
[1:03:14] Speaker: And you, Joe Studwell, you can influence how the newly thing uh works with African governments.
[1:03:24] Speaker: Like we we know your sort of general policy recipe that you advocate for, but I'm more talking more asking about how aid in a reconstituted thing should work with or not uh governments.
[1:03:38] Speaker: What kind of changes would you advise from the status quo when this work is done?
[1:03:44] Speaker 3: I would say go back to how things were done in the era of Truman, uh, which means that you know, when you give aid to a foreign country, you really give them aid.
[1:03:56] Speaker 3: Um, you don't tell them that they've got to buy American and American services.
[1:04:00] Speaker 3: You don't allow Congress to earmark every bit of that aid to be spent in a certain way, um, you know, despite the ignorance of people in Congress about what really goes on in foreign countries.
[1:04:18] Speaker 3: Um and instead you go back to the sort of Truman-era solving when when American aid, for instance, was Korea and to Taiwan, um, and a a lot of money was was given in terms of share of GDP, way more than Africa's ever had.
[1:04:36] Speaker 3: Um, but that that money was enormously um helpful and for those economies because it was it was given on the of right, let's just let's just solve the problems, you and that doesn't rule out anything.
[1:04:52] Speaker 3: You know, if you look at what USAID was doing before it had closed down, the thing had already been largely It was big, right?
[1:05:00] Speaker 3: Uh so one piece of USAID was um just like delivering bags of of wheat to combat zones where American troops were active, right?
[1:05:13] Speaker 3: I mean, it wasn't it wasn't aid at all, um in a sense of of building a society and an economy.
[1:05:21] Speaker 3: Um and um, you know, other stuff was going based on for um, you know, oh you've got to develop develop I mean, like, you know, the Millennium Challenge Corporation is this, and that still exists because Trump won't get rid that.
[1:05:41] Speaker 3: That was created under under Bay Bush.
[1:05:43] Speaker 3: Bush, yeah.
[1:05:44] Speaker 3: And um, you know, they have like a list of things you have apply and you've got to show that you're free and democratic and everything.
[1:05:53] Speaker 3: And it's like, so you know, rather than go out and solve you just start off with a checklist of Of a kind of wish list of what you want.
[1:06:01] Speaker 3: And they don't even apply it.
[1:06:03] Speaker 3: So at the moment, for instance, they're doing um uh doing a load of work in Morocco, right?
[1:06:08] Speaker 3: Morocco is an absolute monarchy, right?
[1:06:11] Speaker 3: It's not it's not democratic, but they've ticked the democracy because it's got a parliament because they want do some work there.
[1:06:18] Speaker 3: Yeah, so the the whole the whole thing becomes a kind of farce rather than you know spending hard-earned taxpayers' to make the world a better place.
[1:06:31] Speaker: Okay, this is a great segue.
[1:06:32] Speaker: You mentioned Morocco.
[1:06:33] Speaker: Uh you'll be at the Growth Summit in Morocco uh next month in in uh late March.
[1:06:39] Speaker: Um the African Urban Lab will be there too.
[1:06:41] Speaker: Um there'll be a nice chunk of funders there, I think less on the aid side, more on just the philanthropic side, um, in you know funding actual doers and organizations like trying to move the needle on on economic growth.
[1:06:57] Speaker: So, you know, let's say you get put in charge of deciding how to allocate a nice boatload of of this funding.
[1:07:05] Speaker: What actual doers or organizations do you do you back and And and this can be sort of this can be nonprofits, it can be you can you can try to you know invest it in in for-profit in in interesting ways.
[1:07:19] Speaker: Um it can be like high-level policy advocacy of the um like Stefan Durkin is doing right now around kind of elite bargains at the high level.
[1:07:28] Speaker: Um be creative.
[1:07:31] Speaker 3: Um so I don't know the philanthropic world terribly well.
[1:07:36] Speaker 3: I mean, I get approach from time to time, but it's a bit of um uh it's a bit of a kind of shotgun thing.
[1:07:45] Speaker 3: But uh, I mean, I've known One Acre for a long time.
[1:07:50] Speaker 3: Um and I think, you know, I think that's a good uh, you know, my kind of um aid operation.
[1:08:01] Speaker 3: So it's a defined target, right?
[1:08:03] Speaker 3: They basically target the missing finance um bit for farmers, provide them fertilizer or solar lights or um on credit.
[1:08:15] Speaker 3: Um they um have grown very well, started and run by young who um are you know very can-do and very good with data, you know, they're very they they're very good at at measuring impact of what they do.
[1:08:34] Speaker 3: And um, you know, if you look at the cost, I'm gonna say a but I hope I might be wrong.
[1:08:40] Speaker 3: But I I think that the if you look at the the the gap between um what they what they spend and what they get back.
[1:08:48] Speaker 3: So in other words, the bit that has to be financed by by money, I think that they um I think it's maybe 25 bucks a per farmer, and that the average impact on output per hectare that they have is over 40%.
[1:09:05] Speaker 3: You know, so it's it's it's it's good.
[1:09:10] Speaker 3: Um and then um I think you know at a sort of more kind of intellectual uh level, there's a number of things going on are of interest.
[1:09:25] Speaker 3: Um I like what Yaqui Silias does at um Institute for Studies in um in Pretoria.
[1:09:35] Speaker 3: Um I don't know a lot about what you guys are doing, but I think that the whole urban uh the whole urban development thing is incredibly important, and I'm not sure it's on the political radar at the moment.
[1:09:48] Speaker 3: So if you can get it on the more on the political radar, but then you've got to come up with you know things that are and straightforward that governments um can do.
[1:09:59] Speaker 3: Um so yeah, I but I I you know there are tons of groups doing stuff, and I can't I can't give you a uh a more um list because it's not something that I do.
[1:10:16] Speaker 3: I just kind of interact with people as I meet them really in in the aid area.
[1:10:23] Speaker: Although I I was I th I think you say at the beginning that was Bill Gates and like Amitar Network or something who who called you in and got you to write this book, right?
[1:10:32] Speaker: So pretty big, you've had some pretty big interactions with philanthropic world, right?
[1:10:36] Speaker 3: Well, that was just because Gates uh liked like the Asia um so much.
[1:10:42] Speaker 3: So then I was asked to go over to Seattle and I did and met him.
[1:10:46] Speaker 3: And we talked about Asia for an hour, and at the end of it, he said, Well, what what I really want to know is what you what you think about Africa.
[1:10:52] Speaker 3: But I didn't do anything at the time because I thought that's you know, I don't know anything about Africa, so what am I do?
[1:10:58] Speaker 3: Um, but I think yeah, it's um I think Gates is very Um, I mean, you know, my observation with Bill Gates would be that he's just a an app he's a total scientist, right?
[1:11:12] Speaker 3: So if it's a problem for which there's a scientific solution, he's very good at it.
[1:11:18] Speaker 3: And I think stuff they do on the health side is extraordinary.
[1:11:21] Speaker 3: If it's uh a problem where the solution is more um he struggles more.
[1:11:31] Speaker 3: And I then I also wonder, you know, why, given how much money there is, he won't have a go and do a bit of infrastructure.
[1:11:40] Speaker 3: I don't know why why he won't have a sort of you know a few gates expressways.
[1:11:48] Speaker: Well, I mean, there you go.
[1:11:49] Speaker: If you if you know, yeah, presumably you have some sway if he approached you for this book.
[1:11:53] Speaker: And uh you've made the case, I think, pretty well in in that agriculture, you know, benefits immensely in terms of uh once it has better market access and road connectivity and integration with demand areas.
[1:12:07] Speaker: So, you know, there's I think there's a strong case to be Um, but why don't lastly here we just wrap up, right?
[1:12:15] Speaker: You you finished your PhD.
[1:12:16] Speaker: So I I guess I should call you Dr.
[1:12:18] Speaker: Studwell.
[1:12:18] Speaker: You you finished this book.
[1:12:20] Speaker: Um what are you working on next?
[1:12:25] Speaker 3: I don't know.
[1:12:25] Speaker 3: Uh I'm kind of in a I've got a bit of a few things, uh a few quick things that I'm doing.
[1:12:32] Speaker 3: Um, but I'm I'm looking for uh what I'm going to do next.
[1:12:38] Speaker 3: So if you have any great ideas, you should let me know.
[1:12:41] Speaker 3: I mean, I'd like to continue to work on Africa because I mainly because um East Asia, Asia now, you know, the the almost gone.
[1:12:53] Speaker 3: So the stuff that I find most interesting, which is kind of getting agriculture moving and then and then going on moving into agricultural processing and the and the beginning of manufacturing, that game is over, right?
[1:13:08] Speaker 3: And uh certainly in East Asia.
[1:13:11] Speaker 3: I mean, you know, there may be a little bit more to come in Southeast Asia and India, but I I yeah, I find I find Africa um more interesting.
[1:13:22] Speaker 3: And I I really enjoyed um doing this book.
[1:13:27] Speaker 3: I mean, I just, you know, um yeah, I thought, you know, I met a lot of like really decent, hardworking people, and I I thought, you know, it's it's all right.
[1:13:40] Speaker: Well, it was a great book, and and um, you know, if you're for things to do after this, I have plenty of ideas for that we'll talk about after we hit the stop button here.
[1:13:51] Speaker: But um, that's all I think for the podcast.
[1:13:53] Speaker: The book for listeners is how Africa works.
[1:13:56] Speaker: Uh, highly recommended, um, especially and incredibly the parts on cities and urbanization.
[1:14:03] Speaker: So, Joe Studwell, thank you for coming on, sir.
[1:14:06] Speaker: Thank you.
[1:14:08] Speaker: Thanks for listening to the Africa Urban Lab podcast.
[1:14:12] Speaker: To listen to our other episodes, follow us on your favorite platform or subscribe to our YouTube channel.
[1:14:20] Speaker: And pretty please, if you like the episode, share with your and your network.
[1:14:24] Speaker: It really, really helps grow the show.
[1:14:27] Speaker: We appreciate it and we appreciate you.
[1:14:30] Speaker: Thanks so much.

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