Ideas in Development – Details, episodes & analysis

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 economic growth, exploring in particular Stefan’s recent work operationalizing elite bargains in the real world. It’s a grounded conversation on why growth and development depend not only on planning and policy, but on the politics that make growth possible.

All AUL Podcast episodes available here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7c-FEmFCyL7z395iWUMlKNFzRyQTnLHH

We will resume our usual schedule next week!

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 in countries like Rwanda and Peru, the synthesis and implementation gaps between academia and policy, and whether there are questions in development economics, like the impacts of cash transfers, on which we now have enough evidence.

Dean Karlan is Professor of Economics and Finance at Northwestern University, founder of Innovations for Poverty Action, and former Chief Economist of USAID.

Read the show notes on our Substack: https://ideasindevelopment.substack.com/

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: https://ideasindevelopment.substack.com/

Check out the Africa Urban Lab: https://www.aul.city/ 

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 Africa: https://housingfinanceafrica.org/ 

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 “Thankfully, there are countries we can look to that found themselves in a similar spot, and managed to find their way out with effective reforms, such as Mexico which stabilised and leveraged fiscal transfers. What did Mexico do that mattered?” 

Read the shownotes on our Substack: Ideas in Development | Oliver Hanney | Substack

Check out the Africa Urban Lab: Home

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: https://www.aul.city/ 

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 escalators lower-income countries depend on. And conclude with the most important questions this series did not resolve.

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 notes on our Substack: https://ideasindevelopment.substack.com/

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.

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.