Episode notes
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…
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Ideas in Development
Ideas in Development · Tech & Science · English
Conversations on the forces shaping economic development.
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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:…
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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…
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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…
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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:…
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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…
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