Joe Studwell

And Kagame will tell you that the right priority is to increase GDP and reduce poverty.

GDP per head as quickly as possible.

I was really upset to see the civil war that broke out in 2020 in Ethiopia because they were the second most populous nation in Africa, and they really have been getting the track set down in the right way.

I will certainly go back to Ethiopia.

I'd probably go back soon because I want to see where they are at now under Abiy.

I think my guess is that they will continue to do relatively well because I just think they've got the basics in place and the commitment to smallholder agriculture that they have, the commitment to manufacturing that they have.

the willingness to engage in a bit of financial repression to support those two things.

I feel that all of that is still there, and they have a really excellent civil service that has been doing this for 30 years now.

So I remain somewhat optimistic about Ethiopia.

I'm also strangely...

optimistic about Nigeria.

I think everybody should go to Lagos just to see the mayhem.

They say that 90% of the population wakes up every morning and doesn't know how it will eat, but everybody does eat by the end of the day.

If ever you wanted an exercise in understanding just how a great density of people can produce a lot of creativity and a lot of value, then I think Lagos is a very good place to go.

And you get other places that are of interest, Benin, also in West Africa, a very small country, but Patrice Talon, who ran the country for two terms, semi-autocratically, but got very focused on development.

And his deputy has now taken over, won an election and taken over from him.

So I think there's something to be positive about that.

But I think it's probably a mugs game to try and pick winners in Africa.

And I, you know, I prefer just to stand back and say I'm optimistic about that.

Or I'm more optimistic about the thing overall than I would have been by a big margin than I would have been 20 years ago.