Ideas in Development

Are African cities a powder keg of restless youth – or the most promising place to build prosperity, peaceful politics and shared civic life?Leonard Wantchekon joins Ideas in Development to argue that African cities should be seen as a youth opportunity, not a youth problem.We discuss recent unrest in Kenya and Tanzania, his work showing that clientelism is overwhelmingly a rural phenomenon, and that deliberation and decentralisation are the institutional minimums African cities should be reaching for. Leonard then lays out what deliberation, decentralisation and a renewed urban culture could do for the next generation of African city dwellers.Read the show notes on our Substack: https://ideasindevelopment.substack.com/Check out the Africa Urban Lab: https://www.aul.city/ 

How does organised crime take over a city – and can mayors act before it does?Chris Blattman, economist and political scientist at the University of Chicago, joins Oliver Hanney and Kurtis Lockhart on the Ideas in Development cities series to explain how street gangs evolve into powerful criminal confederations, why cities like Medellín can have low homicide rates and still be almost completely captured, and what the "terrible trade-off" between violence, criminal power and political corruption means for policymakers.We then discuss the perils faced by fast-growing African cities, where the conditions for organised crime to take root are quietly assembling.Read the show notes on our Substack: https://ideasindevelopment.substack.com/Check out the Africa Urban Lab: https://www.aul.city/ 

Broken land markets are holding back cities across Africa. But not in Rwanda, which was able to register over 10 million land parcels, and issue over 7 million title deeds, in under five years. How did they do it, and what can other countries learn?Thierry Hoza Ngoga, one of this monumental programme's leading implementers, joins the Ideas in Development series on cities to walk through Rwanda's land reform journey, from consultation to rollout, and discuss why dysfunctional land markets may be the single biggest bottleneck to urban growth in Africa.Read the shownotes on our Substack: https://ideasindevelopment.substack.com/Check out the Africa Urban Lab: https://www.aul.city/ 

Africa needs to house nearly a billion new urban residents by 2050. Who's going to build it – and how will it be paid for?Kecia Rust joins the Ideas in Development series on cities to discuss the full housing delivery chain in Africa, the untapped potential of informal builders and rental markets, what micro-mortgages could unlock, and what it would actually take for African governments to go pro-housing.Read the show notes on our Substack: https://ideasindevelopment.substack.com/Check out the Africa Urban Lab: https://www.aul.city/ Check out the Centre for Affordable Housing Finance in Africa: https://housingfinanceafrica.org/ 

There is a paradox at the heart of governing cities in Africa. Mayors are responsible for building the infrastructure their fast-growing cities need. But most don't control the money that this requires. In this episode, we ask how can that change?Astrid Haas joins the Ideas in Development series on cities to discuss why African cities are so fiscally constrained, what reforms in Mexico, the Philippines, and Freetown can teach us, and what national and city governments should prioritise to raise revenue and unlock finance.Note: The following question was accidentally cut at 16:41 “Thankfully, there are countries we can look to that found themselves in a similar spot, and managed to find their way out with effective reforms, such as Mexico which stabilised and leveraged fiscal transfers. What did Mexico do that mattered?” Read the shownotes on our Substack: Ideas in Development | Oliver Hanney | SubstackCheck out the Africa Urban Lab: Home

900 million people will be added to African cities by 2050. Getting this unprecedented urban transition right is one of the defining development challenges of our time.In this opening episode of our new Ideas in Development series on cities, Kurtis Lockhart, founder of the Africa Urban Lab, joins us to set the scene. We discuss why the link between urbanisation and prosperity is breaking down in Africa, what that means for the continent's future, and what the series ahead will explore.Read the show notes on our Substack: https://ideasindevelopment.substack.com/Check out Africa Urban Lab: https://www.aul.city/ 

What actually changes when AI meets institutions, infrastructure, and the people inside them?Oliver Hanney and Deena Mousa recap the Ideas in Development series on AI, drawing on conversations with Raghuram Rajan, Umar Saif, Rose Mutiso, Josh Lerner, Anton Korinek, Bruno Caprettini, Niriksha Shetty, Claire Cullen and Utkarsh Saxena.They cover the key takeaways: why the binding constraint question matters more than the model question; what the data desert problem means for national AI strategies; why access and value capture are not the same thing; and what AI is doing to the growth escalators lower-income countries depend on. And conclude with the most important questions this series did not resolve.

What should a technology minister in a developing country actually focus on when it comes to AI?Umar Saif, computer scientist, former minister of Science and Technology, and IT, in Pakistan, and AI company founder, joins the Ideas in Development series on AI to discuss why data and politics, not technology, are the real bottlenecks to AI in developing countries.In this wide-ranging episode we discuss what he learned from his time in government, why the rush towards sovereign AI capacity may be a costly distraction, his worries for the future, and where he is optimistic.Read the full show notes on our Substack: https://ideasindevelopment.substack.com/

What happens to a growth model built on services when AI can do some of those services itself?Raghuram Rajan joins the Ideas in Development series on AI to discuss how India's economy grew through services exports, why that model may be more resilient to AI than critics assume, and what policymakers need to get right on human capital, universities, and digital access to stay ahead.

Why is there a gap between innovation and impact?Josh Lerner joins the Ideas in Development series on AI to discuss how technology diffuses around the world, touching on the role of venture capital, universities and China.We then cover what this means for the diffusion of AI, and what can be done to speed up diffusion to developing countries.

India is already using AI to unlock its courts, classrooms and farms.In this episode of Ideas in Development, Utkarsh Saxena, Claire Cullen and Niriksha Shetty discuss how their organisations, Adalat AI, Youth Impact, and Precision Development, are deploying AI across India, and what they’ve learned during the process.

How do economists think about the economic impacts of AI today? Will our current economic paradigm still make sense if we reach AGI?In this episode of Ideas in Development, Anton Korinek joins Oliver Hanney and Deena Mousa to discuss some rules of thumb that help to cut through the headlines, and speculate what the labour market impacts of AI might be if technological progress continues to rapidly improve.

In this episode of Ideas in Development, we ask what needs to happen before AI can take off in Africa.Rose Mutiso talks us through the current state of energy and digital infrastructure in Africa, why leapfrogging is not guaranteed with AI, and what fundamental bottlenecks need to be addressed.

How did society change during the industrial revolution? Are there lessons we can learn for the age of AI?In this episode of Ideas in Development, Deena Mousa and Oliver Hanney talk to Bruno Caprettini about one of the most common historical analogies people make when talking about AI: the industrial revolution.We discuss how British society, and the economy, changed in real time during this historical period of unprecedented technological change. What did technological change actually look like when it first unfolded? How long did it take for living standards to rise? And what kinds of disruption and backlash showed up along the way? We also discuss the ways in which AI is similar, and different, to this period of history.

Today on Ideas in Development, we think through why economists sound so different to technologists when discussing AI.Listen to learn about the mismatch between the public discourse on the economic impacts of AI, and how economists tend to think through periods of rapid technological change.This is the first episode of our new series on AI. Joining us as co-host across the next ten episodes is Deena Mousa.

In this episode of Ideas in Development, we explore one of the defining development stories of the last 50 years, Vietnam’s economic transformation. How did a country that endured decades of conflict, severe food shortages, and high levels of absolute poverty, turn around its fortunes so rapidly?To take us through Vietnam’s remarkable rise, we are joined by Economist and Advisor Pham Chi Lan, who lived through this change, and helped to drive Vietnam’s reform process.

In this episode of Ideas in Development, we ask how Peru rapidly became a global leader in exporting high-value fruits and vegetables.To take us through this period of sectoral growth, we were joined by former Minister of Production, Piero Ghezzi, who discusses how the Peruvian government worked with the private sector to unlock bottlenecks, and the experimental industrial policy tool at the heart of that story: Mesas Ejecutivas.

In this episode of Ideas in Development, we ask how Costa Rica, a small country of approximately 5 million people, became an attractive hub that now hosts operations for more than 1,000 multinationals.To take us through this period of economic change, we were joined by Andres Valenciano Yamuni, who played his own role in Costa Rica’s FDI journey during his time as Minister of Foreign Trade.

In our first series of Ideas in Development, we are learning about growth success stories in Latin America, Africa and Asia, directly from the policymakers who helped to make them happen.Throughout these conversations, Oliver Hanney, VoxDev managing editor, be joined Kartik Akileswaran, co-founder of Growth Teams. In this episode we discuss why we are focusing on growth, and his experience working as advisor, funder, and practitioner in the growth ecosystem.

The new VoxDev podcast, Ideas in Development, will focus on the big questions in development. In this first episode, Managing Editor Oliver Hanney discusses why we are doing so, and previews some of the upcoming series we’ve been working on, on growth, AI and cities.