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Conversations with Tyler

Joe Studwell on Africa, Asia, and What Development Actually Requires

Conversations with Tyler

Conversations with Tyler

Education, Society & Culture

4.8 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 18 February 2026

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When Tyler called Joe Studwell's How Asia Works "perhaps my favorite economics book of the year" back in 2013, he wasn't alone: it became one of the most influential treatments of industrial policy ever written. Now Studwell has turned his attention to Africa with How Africa Works. Tyler calls it excellent, extremely well-researched, and essential reading, but does Studwell's optimism about the continent hold up under scrutiny?

Tyler and Joe explore whether population density actually solves development, which African countries are likely to achieve stable growth, whether Africa has a manufacturing future, why state infrastructure projects decay while farmer-led irrigation thrives, what progress looks like in education and public health, whether charter cities or special economic zones can work, and how permanent Africa's colonial borders really are. After testing Joe's optimism about Africa, Tyler shifts back to Asia: what Japan and South Korea will do about depopulation, why industrial policy worked in East Asia but failed in India and Brazil, what went wrong in Thailand, and what Joe will tackle next.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel.

Recorded January 23rd, 2026.

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Image Credit: Nick J.B. Moore

Transcript

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0:00.0

Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University,

0:09.4

bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems.

0:13.5

Learn more at Mercadis.org.

0:15.7

For a full transcript of every conversation enhanced with helpful links,

0:20.4

visit Conversationswithtyler.com.

0:26.5

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler.

0:30.5

Today I'm speaking with Joe Studwell.

0:33.2

Joe has a long and distinguished career as a journalist for many publications, but I know him best for two of his books.

0:40.9

The first is How Asia Works, which is extremely well known and has had major impact.

0:46.2

And now this winter he has a new book coming out, which I thought was great and enjoyed very much.

0:51.2

It is called How Africa Works, Success and Failure on the World's

0:56.0

last developmental frontier. Joe, welcome. Thank you. It's nice to be here. I've many

1:02.4

questions about Africa. If lack of population density has been a major problem, does that mean

1:09.6

we should now be especially optimistic about the Nigerian

1:13.0

Delta, which is densely populated? Yes, you're right. The Nigerian Delta is more densely populated

1:19.6

than most parts of Africa. And it reminds us that population density or increased population

1:26.9

density alone is not enough to solve all of Africa's

1:29.9

problems because Nigeria has been a country plagued with problems since independence.

1:35.2

But Nigeria has also been looking in much better shape in the last 20 years compared with the

1:40.9

period before that since independence.

1:43.2

And I would argue that a big part of that

1:45.2

is increased population density. And broadly, more broadly, across Africa, there is no doubt that

...

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