Podcast · Tech & Science

Ideas in Development

by Ideas in Development · English · Tech & Science

Conversations on the forces shaping economic development.

New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 46 min
Latest: 6 Oct 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

6 Oct 2026 · 46 min

S4 Ep7: Does Africa need development economics?

If every development economist stopped their research tomorrow, would Africa's growth rate in 2040 look any different? Ken Opalo, associate professor at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service and author of the Substack An Africanist Perspective , joins Oliver Hanney to argue that the constraint on African growth is not knowing what to do but knowing how to get it done. He also explains why Kenya's evidence boom has coincided with declining policymaking, and what happens when policymakers outsource their ambitions. In this wide-ranging conversation we cover: Why the SDGs are the wrong goal…

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Earlier episodes 29 most recent

S4 · E6 · 22 Sep 2026 · 55 min
S4 Ep6: GiveDirectly’s quest for scale
GiveDirectly started out as a small nimble team founded by PhD economists, who had a novel approach to ending poverty – just give cash. But they are no longer the new kids on the block, and have been scaling their operations rapidly in recent years, a trend that could intensify if the third wave of American philanthropy materialises. That’s a huge opportunity, but the potential of operating across entire countries is a radically different proposition. So what does an evidence-driven organisation research when it's trying to go from moving millions a year to billions? Caitlin Tulloch, Senior…
S4 · E5 · 8 Sep 2026 · 50 min
S4 Ep5: How BRAC partners with governments to fight poverty
The ultra-poor graduation approach has one of the strongest evidence bases in development. Almost all of that evidence comes from NGO delivery – but true scale typically requires government delivery. Stephanie Brockerhoff, Director for Programme Design and Impact at BRAC's Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative, joins Oliver Hanney to explain why anti-poverty pilots often fall apart at handover, how BRAC partners with governments, and the bottlenecks to scale that remain. Ideas in Development is a VoxDev podcast on economic policy and research. Find us wherever you get your podcasts, and read the…
18 Aug 2026 · 31 min
How to start an export boom
This interview was conducted by Exporters Without Borders (ESF), which incubates entrepreneurs to start new export industries in low and middle income countries. The video version of this podcast, an accompanying article, and their ongoing research are at exporterswithoutborders.com Thomas Kehler started his career teaching at a New England prep school, before he landed in Uganda, where he started guiding fishing tours of Lake Albert. Here he came to know a young Joseph Nye – later a key architect of US foreign policy – who got Thomas thinking about development economics, and how to have…
S4 · E4 · 7 Jul 2026 · 53 min
S4 Ep4: Has development economics lost its way?
What should development economists be working on – and how does their work actually reach the people making decisions? Rachel Glennerster, President of the Center for Global Development, whose career spans the research and policy sides of development, joins Oliver Hanney to discuss her proposal for a radical simplification of aid, why she feels the micro-macro debate is largely a false one, the messy but vital process of building consensus, and what impactful careers look like in economics. In this wide-ranging conversation, we cover the Smart Buys evidence panels in education and how…
30 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 4 min
How global supply chains are built – and how to actually attract investment
Bill McRaith spent his career building supply chains – from 1980s Britain, to a factory in Panyu, China in 1990, to Ethiopia three decades later. He joins Oliver Hanney to explain what really attracts manufacturing investment to a developing economy, and why the model most countries are targeting no longer exists. In this wide-ranging conversation we cover why China’s industry grew; why responsive local governments beat tax holidays; the collapse of the wage gap; how Ethiopia was chosen as a beachhead; and why apparel remains the right first-mover industry for countries not yet on the…
23 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 25 min
Stefan Dercon on elite bargains and kickstarting economic growth (via the AUL Podcast)
Slightly different episode today. This is a repost of a recent episode on the Africa Urban Lab's podcast, in which Kurtis Lockhart (who co-hosted our Cities series) interviews Stefan Dercon - very much an episode I wish I'd recorded! You can watch this episode on the AUL's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGamGT2Z-RM&list=PL7c-FEmFCyL7z395iWUMlKNFzRyQTnLHH Stefan Dercon, Professor of Economic Policy at Oxford and former Chief Economist at the UK’s Department for International Development (now FCDO), joins Kurtis Lockhart to discuss what it takes for cities and countries to kickstart…
S4 · E3 · 16 Jun 2026 · 51 min
S4 Ep3: Moving billions towards evidence
In 2022, Dean Karlan became Chief Economist at USAID, tasked with steering the world's largest bilateral aid agency towards evidence-backed approaches. He left in 2025, as the agency was being dismantled, having moved roughly $1.7 billion of funding in the process. In this episode of Ideas in Development, Dean joins Oliver Hanney to discuss what evidence-based policy actually looks like inside a government institution; how his team picked their battles; why collaboration beat prescription; and where the limits of taking goals as given lie. They also cover the rise of embedded evidence labs…
S1 · E5 · 9 Jun 2026 · 52 min
S1 Ep5: How Ethiopia reformed its economy
Ethiopia is one of Africa's most ambitious bets on export-led manufacturing. It’s also the site of one of the continent's boldest recent macroeconomic reform programmes. In this episode of the Ideas in Development series on growth, Oliver Hanney and Kartik Akileswaran speak with Mamo Mihretu, the tenth Governor of the National Bank of Ethiopia and a former senior economic advisor to the prime minister. Having viewed Ethiopia’s economic change through various lenses, Mamo explains why Ethiopia's industrial parks succeeded where others stalled, what it took to attract anchor investors, and how…
S4 · E2 · 2 Jun 2026 · 46 min
S4 Ep2: Aggregating evidence
The conversation about evidence-based policy usually asks why good evidence isn't shaping decisions. But we should also be asking, is the evidence base itself actually worthy of shaping policy? In this episode of Ideas in Development, Rafe Meager – Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales and one of the leading meta-analysts in economics – explains why a single paper is not a proof, why we should learn to respect statistical noise, and why a result that holds in Kenya may or may not hold in Ghana. We walk through Rafe’s work aggregating microcredit RCTs, and their research…
S4 · E1 · 26 May 2026 · 38 min
S4 Ep1: The evidence gap on evidence use
Development economics has built a large empirical evidence base across a range of topics and policies – but how, when and where is it being used? We often assume that evidence will have an impact, but have surprisingly few answers to these key questions. Michelle Rao, a fellow at the Center for Global Development, joins us for the first episode of our new Ideas in Development series on evidence. We discuss her own research on these questions, which looks at whether evaluations of conditional cash transfers in Latin American and Caribbean countries influenced government spending. Then we…
21 May 2026 · 58 min
Why Dani Rodrik changed his mind on manufacturing
This episode might sound a little different to normal, as it was recorded live. For decades, the standard prescription for growth in developing countries was clear: industrialise. Dani Rodrik used to argue that manufacturing was the escalator that could lift workers out of low productivity, and economies out of poverty. So what happens when the escalator stops working? Dani Rodrik, Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard Kennedy School, joins Ideas in Development to explain why he has become a manufacturing skeptic, what the evidence from Ethiopia, India and…
19 May 2026 · 34 min
Adopt AND innovate: How Brazil and Taiwan did both
How can developing countries catch up with the technology frontier? The standard debate frames it as a choice between adopting technology from abroad and innovating at home. Karthik Tadepalli argues that this dichotomy is false – and that two of the twentieth century's most striking development stories show why. In this episode of Ideas in Development , Karthik takes us from Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), which licensed chip technology in the 1970s and went on to spin out UMC and TSMC, to Brazil's Embrapa, which unlocked an area three times the size of Texas for…
S3 · E7 · 12 May 2026 · 37 min
S3 Ep7: The perfect city?
What does a perfect city look like in a low- or middle-income country – and how do you get there? In the closing episode of our cities series, Ed Glaeser joins Kurtis Lockhart and Oliver Hanney for a wide-ranging conversation on what makes cities work. He sets out the three foundations every city needs (safety, mobility, education), why infrastructure without the right incentives and institutions fails, what 19th-century New York's cholera outbreaks teach Lusaka about water, why “bus good, train bad” still holds, and what the medieval European city has to offer sub-Saharan Africa's…
S3 · E6 · 5 May 2026 · 55 min
S3 Ep6: Cities of opportunity, not powder kegs
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…
S3 · E5 · 28 Apr 2026 · 50 min
S3 Ep5: How crime takes over cities
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…
S3 · E4 · 21 Apr 2026 · 1 hr 3 min
S3 Ep4: Why was Rwanda’s land reform so successful?
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:…
S3 · E3 · 14 Apr 2026 · 46 min
S3 Ep3: YIMBY goes global? How to build more houses in Africa
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…
S3 · E2 · 7 Apr 2026 · 35 min
S3 Ep2: How can African cities pay for stuff?
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…
S3 · E1 · 31 Mar 2026 · 29 min
S3 Ep1: Why cities matter
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:…
S2 · E9 · 24 Mar 2026 · 27 min
S2 Ep9: The development economics of AI: Lessons and questions
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…
S2 · E8 · 17 Mar 2026 · 52 min
S2 Ep8: What tech ministers get wrong about AI
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…
S2 · E7 · 10 Mar 2026 · 46 min
S2 Ep7: India, AI, and the future of service-led growth
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.
S2 · E6 · 3 Mar 2026 · 40 min
S2 Ep6: How does technology diffuse?
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.
S2 · E5 · 24 Feb 2026 · 42 min
S2 Ep5: Three ways India is using AI for development
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.
S2 · E4 · 17 Feb 2026 · 42 min
S2 Ep4: How to think like an economist about AI
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.
S2 · E3 · 10 Feb 2026 · 29 min
S2 Ep3: Can AI take off in Africa?
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.
S2 · E2 · 5 Feb 2026 · 39 min
S2 Ep2: Is the industrial revolution a good comparison for AI?
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…
S2 · E1 · 3 Feb 2026 · 17 min
S2 Ep1: Economists vs Technologists on AI
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.
S1 · E4 · 27 Jan 2026 · 58 min
S1 Ep4: Vietnam’s economy: The remarkable story of the last 50 years
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.

About Ideas in Development

Conversations on the forces shaping economic development.

Ideas in Development is a English tech & science podcast from Ideas in Development. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: Ideas in Development
Language: English
Category: Tech & Science
New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 46 min
Latest episode: 6 Oct 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1866874059
Rights: VoxDev

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