YouSaid · the spoken record

Joe Studwell

lines on the record
59
first
2026-02-18
most recent
2026-02-18
sittings or episodes
1
sources
podcast

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  1. “Think you could say that, but I'm not sure that it's fair yet to say that they are really going backwards. They're in a major transition. The Box on the Development Party is out of power for the first time since independence. So there's a lot of change going on in that respect. I think they're going through a difficult period, but I'm not sure that they're definitely going backwards. I mean, you could say similar things to what you've just said about Botswana, about the United States.”

    2026-02-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Joe Studwell on Africa, Asia, and What Development Actually Requires · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “going forward and encouraged private investment to increase. And you're absolutely right, you're not going to do that with growth rates that bounce around. But I do think that this problem is at least being recognized now.”

    2026-02-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Joe Studwell on Africa, Asia, and What Development Actually Requires · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Well, to get back to Botswana, they managed growth very well. They had a sovereign wealth fund that allowed them to stabilize growth rates. But you're absolutely right that this is something that African countries now need to do. African countries have been extremely bad about this. I talk about it in the book, but it's principally been the hydrocarbon states that have had the most volatile growth over time. The evidence is that they're becoming a little bit better at managing that growth and we have to hope that that continues going forward. I mean, certainly one of the biggest lessons of East Asia and one that you almost never hear repeated is that what developmental states in East Asia did was to get stable growth rates, which then signaled very effectively to the private sector that they could expect steady growth of five, six, seven, eight.”

    2026-02-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Joe Studwell on Africa, Asia, and What Development Actually Requires · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “People, it's how you mobilize those people that determines your potential to develop rapidly. And if you don't have enough of those people, you can't move forward.”

    2026-02-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Joe Studwell on Africa, Asia, and What Development Actually Requires · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “No, because Botswana is an outlier in another sense that essentially the economy is a giant diamond miner. I mean, there are three big diamond mines in Botswana. But that's where all the money for development has come from and it's just been well managed. And they didn't need people. I mean, mining doesn't require much labor modern mining. There's only 10,000 people work in the diamond industry in Botswana. So the low population density of Botswana doesn't prove anything. I think what we're talking about is possibilities that there are for development in countries that don't have outsized mineral or hydrocarbon assets and are going to rely on their people to deliver development. And of course, people are the key input in a poor country because you don't have cash and you don't have technology.”

    2026-02-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Joe Studwell on Africa, Asia, and What Development Actually Requires · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “and has also contributed to the outperformance of the whole Lagos area on the coast, which is a real sort of hive of entrepreneurial activity. So I would agree with you that Nigeria doesn't give great hope to us that greater population density across Africa is going to produce better results. But I would say that there are particular reasons within Nigeria that we can point to as to why Nigeria hasn't delivered as much as one would hope so far.”

    2026-02-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Joe Studwell on Africa, Asia, and What Development Actually Requires · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “So I would say that Nigeria has been something of an outlier in terms of underperformance as a state which is densely populated by African standards. And as we all know, they had a terrible civil war there in the late 1960s. The ethnic divisions in Nigeria, even by African standards, are particularly acute. You have a nation which is broadly divided in three with roughly equal numbers among those three groups and they've always fought for power with each other. So the ethnic fragmentation problem has been particularly difficult in Nigeria. Nonetheless, I would say that the population density is what has allowed Nigeria to have a better performance in agriculture than most people expect over the last 20, 30 years.”

    2026-02-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Joe Studwell on Africa, Asia, and What Development Actually Requires · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Ethnic strife in reality the biggest problem that Africa has had and largely as a result of the disease burden on the continent which is absolutely unique in its virulence is having population density which in 1960 was one fifth out of Asia as a whole and one seventh what it was in East Asia.”

    2026-02-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Joe Studwell on Africa, Asia, and What Development Actually Requires · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Yes, you're right. The Nigerian Delta is more densely populated than most parts of Africa. And it reminds us that population density or increased population density alone is not enough to solve all of Africa's problems because Nigeria has been a country plagued with problems since independence. But Nigeria has also been looking in much better shape in the last 20 years compared with the period before that since independence. And I would argue that a big part of that is increased population density. And broadly across Africa, there's no doubt that very low population density has been the biggest problem for the continent's development. Contrary to what the academic literature has told us of the last fifty years, which was that it's all to do with governance and civil war and civil strife and”

    2026-02-18 · Conversations with Tyler · Joe Studwell on Africa, Asia, and What Development Actually Requires · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source