Joe Studwell

The biggest unknown in Africa is the extent to which governance will respond to thicker populations, greater growth, greater capacity to raise taxes and therefore expand the capabilities of government.

To what extent will African governments respond to this more benign, positive environment and up their game?

Thank you for having me.

You're right, but we generalize about Asia and talking about Asia at the same time.

And there's almost as much diversity in Asia.

So I think we have to recognize that 55 countries are very different in Africa.

But nonetheless, there they are on this vast landmass together.

And their economies are going to evolve with close relations with each other as we go forward.

So there is, to my mind, still a value in talking economically about Africa.

And you can sort of see that in terms of what's happening within the continent, because there was a...

trend to put the Arab states in with the Middle East over the last sort of 30, 40 years.

So, and not count North Africa really as part of Africa, but the North African countries themselves, now that there is some economic traction in sub-Saharan Africa, are starting to talk about themselves as being fundamentally African states.

I didn't go with an expectation of what I would find.

I thought that there might be something different about what was required in Africa in policy terms.

I think that's about as much of a predisposition as I had.

I mean, I started out by reading through the academic literature, and so I went through all the literature on governance failure, of which there's a huge amount in Africa, corruption, kleptocracy, civil strife, ethnic strife.

But I got to the end of reading all that feeling that I hadn't really got an argument about what the fundamental reason was why Africa's development had lagged as much as it has.

And that's what took me on to the demographic stuff that I got to eventually.

Yeah, often symptomatic rather than fundamental reasons for developmental failure, if you like.

It was when I got to the demographics that I felt that I found something that had a much more powerful explanatory potential.