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Speaker 1: Good morning, kay Town with Africa Milani in for less

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Speaker 1: to give it on talk.

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Speaker 2: How Africa Works is a groundbreaking new study of the

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Speaker 2: continent's developmental history, considering everything from settler colonialism to soil conditions, disease,

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Speaker 2: development and eradication, land appropriation, and explores how the mass

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Speaker 2: economic seizure the continent has witnessed. And the author of

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Speaker 2: this is visiting research fellow at the Overseas Development Institute,

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Speaker 2: a journalist an author of previously How Asia Works. Joining

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Speaker 2: me via zoom from London is Joe Stadwell, Joe a hearty,

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Speaker 2: hearty good morning and congratulations on your book.

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Speaker 1: Thank you, Good morning to you Africa, and good morning

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Speaker 1: to South Africa.

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Speaker 2: How Africa Works was inspired by what.

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Speaker 3: It was a very strange inspiration process because initially Bill

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Speaker 3: Gates liked the book I wrote about East Asia, How

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Speaker 3: Asia Works, and I saw him in Seattle and at

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Speaker 3: the end of it he said, what I'd really like

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Speaker 3: to know is what you think about Africa.

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Speaker 1: I thought that's kind of crazy, because I don't know

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Speaker 1: anything about Africa. But then I was invited by the

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Speaker 1: Ethiopian and Rwandan governments to go and look at what

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Speaker 1: they were doing. And particularly in Ethiopia. I was so impressed.

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Speaker 1: This was pre the recent civil war. I was so

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Speaker 1: impressed by the quality of the politicians and the civil

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Speaker 1: servants and just how much they knew about developmental history

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Speaker 1: that I thought, you know, maybe I should get involved here.

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Speaker 1: But of course the book took a long time because

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Speaker 1: I was I was so ignorant at the outset. So

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Speaker 1: I spent five years doing this book looking at the

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Speaker 1: fifty four fifty five countries in the African continent. But

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Speaker 1: it was it was great, It was a great experience.

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Speaker 2: Ultimately, you focused then on Ethiopia and Runner because he

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Speaker 2: had visited those two. You added Botswana and Mauritius. Why

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Speaker 2: are those two additional countries, So the.

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Speaker 1: Actually focus on about fifteen countries in the continent. The

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Speaker 1: reason for looking at Mauritius and Bodswana, Ethiopia and Rwanda

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Speaker 1: is because those are four countries in Africa that have

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Speaker 1: sustained elevated growth rates for long periods of time twenty

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Speaker 1: plus years. This is still pretty unusual in Africa, and

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Speaker 1: so I looked at them to understand better why that was.

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Speaker 1: And the thing that leapt out with respect to those

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Speaker 1: four countries was that they had all been characterized by

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Speaker 1: cross ethnic political coalitions. In each case they were able

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Speaker 1: to concentrate on developmental issues and on growing the economy

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Speaker 1: because they put the ethnic issues aside very early in

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Speaker 1: the developmental process. And so that was one of the

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Speaker 1: findings that comes out of the book.

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Speaker 2: How did they achieve that, I wonder, Joe, because it

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Speaker 2: seems this was a pivotal ingredient in them succeeding in

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Speaker 2: their development.

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Speaker 1: Well, it was it was just politics, you know. Mauritius,

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Speaker 1: they had a population divided between the ethnic Indian and

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Speaker 1: Pakistani people who were brought in to replace slaves when

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Speaker 1: slavery finally ended. And then what's in Mauritius called the

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Speaker 1: Creole population, which is the descendants of Madagascar and Mozambika,

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Speaker 1: largely slaves.

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Speaker 3: There.

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Speaker 1: The population was totally divided between these two groups. There's

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Speaker 1: quite a lot of ethnic strife around independence. But the

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Speaker 1: Indian guy who became the first post independence prime minister

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Speaker 1: there reached out to the leader on the Creole side

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Speaker 1: and said, let's let's form a developmental coalition because it's

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Speaker 1: going to be a lot easier than me trying to

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Speaker 1: govern with thirty forty percent of the of the population

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Speaker 1: loathing me and against me. And there was a similar

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Speaker 1: thing that probably South Africa's are more familiar with in Botswana,

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Speaker 1: where all of the groups there were Swana ethnic Swanna groups,

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Speaker 1: but nonetheless there were differences and they had their own territories,

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Speaker 1: and Seriati Kama brought them together, got them to agree

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Speaker 1: that mineral resources, which included of course the diamonds, would

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Speaker 1: be national resources and not different ethnic group resources which

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Speaker 1: they were originally. So again it was a cross ethnic

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Speaker 1: coalition that made things happen. And that was the same

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Speaker 1: in Ethiopia, except that the ethnic coalition behind it. You

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Speaker 1: had Tigraeans, who were only six percent of the population,

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Speaker 1: controlling the military and the security services and manipulating things

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Speaker 1: to a significant extent, and that really was at the

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Speaker 1: root of the civil war that kicked off in twenty twenty.

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Speaker 1: But nonetheless, it was a real attempt to create a

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Speaker 1: cross ethnic coalition because in the cabinets in Ethiopia there

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Speaker 1: was always a big ethnic mix of people, and even today,

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Speaker 1: in fact under Albi, you have Tigrayans in his cabinets.

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Speaker 1: So all of the success stories in Africa have this

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Speaker 1: in common that the politicians have attempted to put the

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Speaker 1: ethnic slash racial issue aside in order to focus on development.

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Speaker 2: And it's interesting that in a country like Ethiopia and

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Speaker 2: Botswana they needed to be a coalition in an outstanding

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Speaker 2: of course amongst political rivals previously that we need to

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Speaker 2: work together to develop the country, whereas in Ruande, I

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Speaker 2: suppose it happened a differently, right, Paul Kagami amassed so

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Speaker 2: much power and influence that he almost dictates what happens

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Speaker 2: in that country.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I think Rwanda was it started out as ostensibly

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Speaker 1: across ethnic coalition because when after the genocide, Kagami made

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Speaker 1: sure that Hutu's controlled most of the cabinet positions. He

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Speaker 1: was just the defense minister, and he projected an image

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Speaker 1: that this is a cross ethnic coalition. But of course,

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Speaker 1: as you say Africa, what has happened as time has

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Speaker 1: gone by is he's overtly taken more and more power

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Speaker 1: into his hands. And so Rwanda really is more a

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Speaker 1: case of a kind of fake cross ethnic coalition.

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Speaker 2: Well, we made reference to your earlier work, how Eezier Works,

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Speaker 2: which came out in twenty thirteen. Are they any comparisons

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Speaker 2: between certainly the countries you focused on on the African

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Speaker 2: continent and how they compared to how the study you

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Speaker 2: did in Asia and how those economies worked.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think that the big similarity and

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Speaker 1: what surprised me in retrospect. Maybe it shouldn't have surprised me,

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Speaker 1: but the policies that were most effective in East Asia

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Speaker 1: are the same ones that you see applicated in Mauritius

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Speaker 1: or Botswana or Ethiopia. That essentially, you've got to emphasize

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Speaker 1: agriculture early on because that's what occupies most people in

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Speaker 1: a poor country. That manufacturing is extremely important because it's

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Speaker 1: the only way really to bring people out of the

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Speaker 1: rural economy into the modern economy. And that what you

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Speaker 1: do in finance, to manage money and keep domestic savings

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Speaker 1: available for domestic development, all of that is the same.

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Speaker 1: So there's African countries have. There's no new recipe in

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Speaker 1: policy terms for development. What is completely different in Africa

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Speaker 1: is the context. And the most fundamental thing that is

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Speaker 1: different in Africa if you think about Asia is the demographics.

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Speaker 1: And that's what I talk about quite a lot. So

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Speaker 1: if we go back to nineteen sixty demographic density across

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Speaker 1: the whole continent was less than ten people on average

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Speaker 1: per square kilometer, and that was a fifth of what

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Speaker 1: it was across the whole of Asia. It was a

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Speaker 1: seventh of what it was in East Asia. Basically, Africa

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Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty had too few people to develop because

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Speaker 1: you need markets, right, and you need people to have markets.

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Speaker 1: You need urban centers, particularly cities, which are big centers

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Speaker 1: of demand and drive development in all economies. And of

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Speaker 1: course you need to build infrastructure. But if you have

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Speaker 1: too few people, then the per person cost of infrastructure

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Speaker 1: is completely unaffordable. So what I argue in the book

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Speaker 1: is that actually for sixty years after nineteen sixty, if

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Speaker 1: we take that as an approximate anchor point for independent Africa,

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Speaker 1: for sixty years Africa was just waiting to grow its

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Speaker 1: population to a point where demographic density meant that it

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Speaker 1: could get in the developmental game. And that is finally

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Speaker 1: happening now and we see it reflected in a slightly

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Speaker 1: higher growth rates across the continent, and particularly in much

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Speaker 1: higher agricultural growth rates, which is what you'd expect in

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Speaker 1: poor countries. And since two thousand, just to give you

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Speaker 1: one data point, African agricultural output has grown across the

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Speaker 1: whole continent at an average of more than four percent

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Speaker 1: a year, and that's the highest rate in the world.

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Speaker 1: That's ahead of East Asian countries. So Africa is beginning

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Speaker 1: to move now.

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Speaker 2: I imagine South Africa we'll need to study that book as

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Speaker 2: closely as possible. Were hovering at about one percent growth

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Speaker 2: at the moment, and we need a much higher rate

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Speaker 2: of growth in order to address our social ills. I

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Speaker 2: want to finish off with this, Joe. In your book,

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Speaker 2: both How Asia Works as well as How Africa Works,

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Speaker 2: you highlight the fact that poverty is a product of

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Speaker 2: policy decisions. Does it tend to reason then that if

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Speaker 2: we take the right policy decisions or make the right

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Speaker 2: policy decisions, we could get ourselves out of poverty.

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Speaker 1: So but I mean, let me just say, as an

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Speaker 1: aside Africa, that South Africa is a country apart in Africa, right,

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Speaker 1: it has a completely different set of problems. It's much

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Speaker 1: more developed, but it's got this post apartheid set of problems.

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Speaker 1: It really relates most obviously to the eleven other white

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Speaker 1: settler colonies that there were in Africa. But South Africa's

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Speaker 1: problems are particularly acute. So when I'm talking in this book,

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Speaker 1: I'm really talking about the rest of Sub Saharan Africa.

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Speaker 1: I'm not talking about South Africa, which has got its

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Speaker 1: own set of problems. On the question of poverty. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: as I say, with the demographic density that we now have,

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Speaker 1: with one point five billion people in Africa, the continent

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Speaker 1: is able to get moving in developmental terms, and I'm

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Speaker 1: confident that we will see poverty rates coming down going forward.

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Speaker 1: And in fact, poverty rates have come down in a

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Speaker 1: significant number of African countries over the last twenty years,

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Speaker 1: so I'm reasonably I'm reasonably optimistic, but I would caveat

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Speaker 1: that by saying the parts of Africa that I'm most

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Speaker 1: troubled by are South Africa and North Africa, and all

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Speaker 1: really for political reasons.

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Speaker 2: I can't wait to grab ahold of the book. Joe,

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Speaker 2: thank you very much for your time this morning. Joe Staddwell,

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Speaker 2: author of How Africa Works, Success and Failure on the

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Speaker 2: world's last developmental frontier. It's published by Jonathan Ball Publishers

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Speaker 2: and retailing for four hundred and fifty Roe. You can

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Speaker 2: get it at all leading bookstores. Joe Staddell thank you

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Speaker 2: very much, indeed for your time