Loading summary
Commercial Narrator
We don't just invest in cutting edge companies. We look at companies with a history of steady growth and companies whose growth cycle has come round again. Because in the real world, you have to look at growth in three dimensions. Monks Investment Trust when you're running a business, the best days are the ones where priorities stay on track. For midsize and large companies, that isn't always easy. Risk can touch multiple parts of an organization at the same time, often in ways that aren't immediately obvious. It might involve property liability or cyber. It could stem from regulatory requirements or challenges tied to a specific industry or the scale of an operation. At that level, managing risk becomes an ongoing discipline, not a one time decision. the Hartford, the focus is on helping businesses manage risk before it turns into something more disruptive. That means working with companies to identify where they're exposed, to decide what matters most and put practical standards in place so risk is managed as part of day to day operations. And when losses do happen, the Hartford can pair that risk control work with insurance coverage grounded in underwriting, risk engineering and claims experience developed over time. Learn more@thehartford.com RiskMitigation Small businesses are the
Marian Sumset Webb
pulse of every community. They bring people together, create opportunities and drive growth. Chase for Business helps business owners like you with personalized guidance and convenient digital tools all in one place. With that guidance and your determination, you can take your business farther and help build a brighter future for your community. Learn more@chase.com business chase for business make more of what's yours. The Chase Mobile app is available for select mobile devices. Message and data rates may apply JP Morgan Chase Bank Naomi Member, FDIC Copyright 2026 JPMorgan Chase Co. Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts Radio News the biggest unknown in
Jo Stadwell
Africa is the extent to which governance will respond to thicker populations, greater growth, greater capacity to raise taxes, and therefore expand the capabilities of government. To what extent will African governments respond to this more benign, positive environment and up their game.
Marian Sumset Webb
Welcome to Marian Talks Money, the podcast in which people who know the markets explain the markets. I'm Marian Sumset Webb. This week we are focusing on one of the most misunderstood and often oversimplified dimensions of economic development, population. Jo Stadwell, journalist and author of How Africa Works Success and Failure on the World's Last Developmental Frontier, joins me today. And we talk about how population dynamics shape Africa's economic trajectory, not just in terms of size, but also structure. And we talk about how demographics can influence industrialization, urbanization, and political stability.
Jo Stadwell
Joe welcome to marantalks Money thank you for having me.
Marian Sumset Webb
The first thing to say, I guess, is that a book that is just about Africa is a little all encompassing. Africa is full of, you know, so many different countries, different cultures, different languages, endless different things going on. So I suppose the first thing we should talk about is to what extent is it really possible to generalize about a continent that is so huge and so diverse?
Jo Stadwell
You're right, but we generalize about Asia and talking about Asia at the same time. And there's almost as much diversity in Asia. So I think we have to recognize that 55 countries are very different in Africa, but nonetheless, there they are on this vast landmass together. And their economies are going to evolve with close relations with each other as we go forward. So there is, to my mind still a value in talking economically about Africa. And you can sort of see that in terms of what's happening within the continent because there was a trend to put the Arab states in with the Middle east over the last sort of 30, 40 years. So, and not count North Africa really as part of Africa, but the North African countries themselves, now that there is some economic traction in sub Saharan Africa, are starting to talk about themselves as being fundamentally African states.
Marian Sumset Webb
Okay, so when you went into this, because, you know, your, your last very well known book was how Asia works into how Africa works, it's a, it's a bit of a, a shift. Did you go into this with an expectation of what you would find?
Jo Stadwell
I didn't go with an expectation of what I would find. I thought that there might be something different about what was required in Africa in policy terms. I think that's about as much of a, of a predisposition as I had. I mean, I started out by reading through the academic literature. And so I went through all the literature on governance failure, of which there's a huge amount in Africa. Corruption, kleptocracy, civil strife, ethnic strife. But I got to the end of reading all that feeling that I hadn't really got an argument about what the fundamental reason was why Africa's development had lagged as much as it, as it has. And that's what took me onto the demographic stuff that I got to eventually.
Marian Sumset Webb
Okay, so you felt that all these things, the sort of relentless debt, the conflict, ethnic conflict, in particular, the corruption, kleptocracy, et cetera, none of these things were in themselves enough to explain why Africa has not been able to develop in the same way as other areas.
Jo Stadwell
Yeah, often symptomatic rather than fundamental reasons for developmental failure. If you like it was when I got to the demographics that I felt that I found something that had much more powerful explanatory potential.
Marian Sumset Webb
When you looked at Asia, was that something that stood out to you at the time or did that come later? Was it only when you started looking at Africa that you looked back at Asia and thought, well, that already had this population density, or did it not really come up then?
Jo Stadwell
One always discussed demographics in Asia because. It was always relevant, but you didn't discuss it that much because it was never a problem. Asia in 1960 always had sufficient demographic density to be able to pay for its infrastructure, to have deep, concentrated urban markets, to raise taxes. I mean, all of the stuff that you need to do developmentally. So I had never thought in two, three decades, working in Asia, of demographics as something that could fundamentally constrain economic development. It was just a sort of marginal variable.
Marian Sumset Webb
Okay, let's talk about how it can constrain them. What is it about population density that makes the difference?
Jo Stadwell
Well, when you have super low population density, as you did in Africa, if you go back to the end of the Second World War, Africa is this vast landmass into which you can fit China, India, Europe and the US and it's hard to believe, but if you cut the countries out of an atlas and try, you'll find that that's correct. That's how vast Africa is. And yet it had only 220 million people at the end of the Second World War. The constraint that that produces is that you get population density averaged over Africa of less than 10 people per square kilometer. You think of the size of a square kilometer and only 10 people in it. It's very few. And the impact that this has economically is, well, you don't have markets, you don't have meaningful concentrated markets. So if you think 1900 for Africa, the two biggest cities were Lagos and Dar es Salaam, and they had populations of 20,000 people. And this is a time when cities like Singapore or Shanghai and East Asia had a quarter of a million or half a million in the case of Singapore. So it's just a different order of magnitude. So you haven't got concentrated centers of population to demand goods and will reliably pay for goods and services. And also cities have always been very, very important historically as places to raise tax. It's always been much easier to get tax off urbanites than it is off people living in a dispersed condition in the countryside. So you have that problem, and then you have the problem that you've got to have infrastructure to have a modern economy and you look at infrastructure cost per capita, and Africa in 1960 can't afford anything, can't afford roads, can't afford power networks, can't afford irrigation systems, any of the things. You know, there are things that get built usually with sort of foreign. Foreign aid, but there's nothing is affordable within the internal capability of African governments. So you're just totally constrained. And you know, if you want the cross. The historical comparison for the population density, that of Africa in 1960 was equivalent to Europe in 1500. And so then we ask how much growth was there in Europe in 1500? Well, there wasn't any. So why did we think that there was going to be lots of growth in Africa? Yes, I think it was some of the things that were said in the 60s and the 70s about what Africa could do were frankly crazy and were really just based around some mineral investments. And people thought that these mineral enclaves were going to translate into broad economic development, which they don't anywhere in the world, because mineral economies employ very few people. And they are genuine enclaves cut off from the rest of the economy. And I'm not saying that you shouldn't dig up your minerals. You should dig up your minerals, but they do not lead to broad based economic development.
Marian Sumset Webb
Okay, so the argument is that now much of Africa has reached the level of population density that southeast Asia had already hit in the 60s, and that should be the thing that suddenly pushes economic growth higher. And one of the things you talk about in the book is that this tends to start with fast rises in agricultural growth and particularly agricultural productivity. And we're already seeing that.
Jo Stadwell
Yeah, so that's, I think, the biggest sort of or the hardest evidence for optimism, if you like, in the book, would be what's been going on in agriculture since the mid-90s. But to make things more straightforward, I provide data from 2000 on since when agricultural growth in Africa as a whole has been over 4% a year, highest rate in the world, and in many countries a lot higher than that. Nigeria has been doing 6% a year. And it's not because the government has got great agriculture policy. It's because of the density of the population. And what's happened in Africa is that as population has doubled approximately in 25 years because there's been a bit of economic growth as well, Demand for food by value has tripled. That drives the production of crops that's good for ordinary people, smallholder farmers, but particularly in peri urban areas. So African agriculture is becoming very bifurcated now between people who are farming around cities, of which There are over 7,000 designated cities in Africa now, people who are farming in those areas because the urban demand is so relentless, so reliable, that you can grow relatively value added crops, things like tomatoes, instead of what you would have grown in the deep countryside. And you can sell it and you can make thousands of dollars per hectare and you can afford to buy little pumps and irrigate your soil. And that will allow you to increase yields at the same time as that is on a lot of places in deep rural Africa where nothing has changed yet.
Marian Sumset Webb
And across Africa, is agricultural production keeping up with population growth? Because these are really fast growing populations now.
Jo Stadwell
Yes, it is. So by value, agricultural output is, as I said, going up over 4% a year, populations going up less than 3. So population growth is slowing more slowly than it did in East Asia, but it is nonetheless slowing. And in some African countries, there's a lot of variation.
Marian Sumset Webb
So fertility rates are falling in Africa and the same way as they are everywhere else. Not to the same extent, obviously, but they are still falling.
Jo Stadwell
They're falling, but they're coming down from a high level. And so this means that it will be some time before Africa gets its demographic dividend, in other words, where it gets a very large share of working people relative to kids and older people. To my mind, one of the most useful things that what remains of the aid industry can do in Africa is to put money into female education, because that is very closely correlated with lifetime fertility. I mean, even girls who just do primary school have a massively reduced propensity to have lots of kids during their lifetime. And it's economically very important because the bigger and longer the demographic dividend, the better it is obviously for African development.
Marian Sumset Webb
Okay, but interesting. So we don't necessarily want fertility rates to fall in Africa, though. I mean, based on this idea of population density, you would want populations to increase for some time to come to produce that population dividend?
Jo Stadwell
No, I mean, I think that this is not a perfect science, but to my mind, once you get beyond sort of 50, 60, 70 people per square kilometer on average, obviously your urban densities are massively higher than that. Then reducing population growth abruptly in order to maximize the demographic dividend makes sense. It's not the case that there's a direct correlation. The more people you get, the better it is for forever and forever. It's about having a minimum density of people. That means that you can afford the infrastructure that you have, the markets that you've got, the division of labor, that's required to do complex things efficiently.
Marian Sumset Webb
Okay, so 5060 is around ideal. I mean, I know it's not a
Jo Stadwell
precise science, but it's not a perfect science. And I'm just making historical analogies with what the case was in Asia, but I'm saying that clearly 910 was way too low. 5060 work for Asia. But having been 5060 in Asia, it then tripled over the next 70 years. And in East Asia, it's now around 150. But Africa will go to 150 on its current population trajectory.
Marian Sumset Webb
Okay.
Jo Stadwell
I mean, it's going to be 4 billion people at the end of the century in Africa, and there'll be 4 billion people in Asia, and there will be only 2 billion people in the rest of the world. If the UN's projections are to be believed.
Marian Sumset Webb
They usually aren't. I mean, they're mostly out by quite a lot, aren't they? They're projections. They general guidelines than anything remotely precise. I mean, they keep changing their idea of a peak global population. That's darkest.
Commercial Narrator
We don't just invest in cutting edge companies. We look at companies with a history of steady growth and companies whose growth cycle has come round again. Because in the real world, you have to look at growth in three dimensions. Monk's Investment Trust Support for the show comes from public. Lately, it feels like there are two types of investing platforms. Some are traditional brokerages that haven't changed much in decades, and others feel less like investing and more like a game. Public is positioned differently. It's an investing platform for people who are serious about building their wealth on public. You can build a portfolio of stocks, options, bonds, crypto without all the bugs or the confetti. Retirement accounts? Yep. High yield cash. Yes again. They even have direct indexing. Public has modern design, powerful tools and customer support that actually helps go to public.com market and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com market ad paid for by public holdings brokerage services by Public Investing Member FINRA SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors SEC Registered Advisor Crypto Services by ZeroHash. All investing involves risk of loss. See completedisclosures@public.com disclosures.
Marian Sumset Webb
Financial growth begins long before the first investment. It comes from understanding what you're building toward, what's at stake and what success looks like for you. At Oppenheimer, we bring bold thinking, guided by the full strength of our expertise to put capital to work building and protecting wealth that lasts generations. Put the power of Oppenheimer Thinking to work for you. Wealth management, capital markets, investment banking. Let's go back actually to education, because I know that one of the things that you also say is that people underestimate how well educated Africa's population is and therefore how ready it is for economic growth. And obviously efficient education is also a function of population density to a degree, but it's underappreciated, isn't it?
Jo Stadwell
Yeah, I think that what African governments managed to do post 1960 in education is really underreported and, and was very important. So, I mean, again, it was this very low population density that meant that colonial governments couldn't raise tax either. So their response to not being able to raise any significant tax was to not run schools. And there were no schools, bar missionary schools in Africa until the 1950s. I mean, one or two tiny exceptions. So obviously South Africa was an exception, Mauritius was an exception. But elsewhere there are no schools until the 50s. And so in 1960, Africa comes into the independence era with a literacy rate of 16, 16% and a female literacy rate of 5%. And this makes modern economic activity really close to impossible. And African governments put huge resources into opening schools after 1960. And the World bank in the 70s did a review of what had been done and said nowhere in the world has built education systems as fast as Africa. I mean, it's genuinely extraordinary what has been achieved here. If you take a single country example, I mean, someone like Julius Nyerere running Tanzania after independence, he inherited a country with a literacy rate of 15%. And by the mid-80s, literacy was up to over 80%. So all that has been very important. And without that educational progress, I don't think that the thickening of populations would be producing the pickup in growth that we've been seeing since the turn of the century.
Marian Sumset Webb
Okay, so outside agriculture, where is the growth coming from, the big drivers?
Jo Stadwell
Well, I think you've got to sort of add that there's the other bit of agriculture, the manufacturing end of agriculture, which we always forget about because we always think agriculture is about farmers. But of course, once you've produced the crops, then the crops have got to be milled, they've got to be turned into processed foods. There has been a colossal boom in processed foods in Africa, all across Africa in the last 25 years. Most Africans now eat African produced processed foods, and they're very local to local tastes. I mean, what Nigerians eat, even in one part of Nigeria, is not what Nigerians buy in another part. And they're certainly not what they buy in different areas of Africa. And that has meant a fantastic boom in the manufacturing end of agriculture. And it's reckoned that around half of all the capital expenditure in manufacturing in Africa at the moment is going on agricultural processing. So there's that. And then you have, it's very variable by country. You have the beginnings of some greater amount of other manufacturing in Africa. But this is a return. If you look at it as a share of gdp, it's sort of bottoming out and going up and hopefully heading back towards where we were in the 70s, at the end of the 70s. And that is because after independence, when economies were much smaller, African governments put a lot of money into manufacturing projects and they almost all failed again, largely would fail because for demographic reasons, in 1960, labor rates, factory labor rates in Africa were twice what they were in Asia. It seems extraordinary. That's the supply and demand of human labor. But now wage rates, if you compare with China, so China's at about $600 per month for factor. And if you compare with that, different African countries are between half and 1/10. So the cheapest would be places like Madagascar or Ethiopia. 60 bucks a month for a factory worker. Of course, that's bringing in some investment. And the leaders in the manufacturing investment, if you think of fdi, are the Chinese. There was a piece in the Economist last week or the week before talking about this. It's reckoned based on the FTS on the Financial Times FTI database, which is micro level, firm by firm, it's reckoned that the Chinese put over 12 billion into manufacturing investment in China last year. And most of it is because profit rates are pretty low in China now. Things are so competitive and they come and they look at Africa and often people are seeing products that are priced 3, 4, 5 times what they cost in China. And so Chinese investment is coming, chasing better returns. And it's a sort of a slow, a slow build. It's not helped by the fact that African governments don't recognize that manufacturing is something that you just cannot develop quickly without, because it's massively the most efficient way to take your rural population into the modern economy. There's just no kind of, there's no sort of political commitment really to manufacturing in Africa, although the African Union has tried to ferment one. But nonetheless, manufacturing is going on. And when you go and visit manufacturing hubs, manufacturing enclaves in Africa, each of the ones. So I went to Lesotho, to Madagascar, to Morocco, and in each of these places you just think, well, there's no real reason why There can't be a lot more of this here because the labor is. It starts off massively less productive than in China, but it goes up a fairly steep curve. And, you know, in one to two years, people running factories generally are happy with the productivity that they're getting.
Marian Sumset Webb
And what other similarities would there be? And we're talking about this transfer of manufacturing from China and parts of Southeast Asia into Africa now. But if you look at the way that the Southeast Asian economies developed during that period of 60s, 70s, what similarities do you expect there to be with the African economies? And if you remember, those Southeast Asian economies in the beginning were very closed. Lots of tariffs and regulations and lots of capital control even to keep growth internalized. Is that the way you expect to see the African economies go as well?
Jo Stadwell
I mean, if we're talking in a very geographically specific way about Southeast Asia, and we're thinking about countries like Indonesia and the Philippines, then I think that, that Africa will be more like that than it will like the Northeast Asian countries with the sort of super competent governments in Japan and Korea and China and today Vietnam. So I think it will be more like traditional Southeast Asia. And you can already see certain things. So going back to the businesses that I was talking about that have come out of agriculture, the agricultural manufacturers and processes, you can already see them evolving in the way that a company like CP Group did in Thailand or Salim Group did in Indonesia, that they get these cash flows, very good cash flows out of agricultural processing. I mean, Salim was making noodles, CP was doing seeds. And then they take that money and they build these kind of Christmas tree conglomerates. And you can see this happening already in Africa. So in Tanzania you have Buckrayza as the biggest agribusiness enterprise. And they operate across 10 countries now. And they're doing all their agribusiness and they're basically millers. But on top of that, they've also now got hydrofoil businesses going out to Zanzibar. They've got real estate, they've got a TV station, they've got a football club. And, you know, with a kind of oligarch at the top. It all feels to me quite Southeast Asian. And I think that much of Africa will go in that kind of direction. It's way less efficient developmentally than what you get in a Vietnam or a China or a Japan, but it's not bad.
Marian Sumset Webb
Still progress.
Jo Stadwell
It's still progress, yeah.
Marian Sumset Webb
Should we worry about a commodity super cycle and that much conversation these days about sharply rising prices of commodities across the board? Copper, silver, gold, Palladium, rare earth metals, et cetera. And there is the resource curse, isn't there? If there is another commodity super cycle and we see all these prices going up massively, is that good for long term growth across Africa or even is it a problem?
Jo Stadwell
How good it is depends on how well the money is used. And in previous cycles, most of the money hasn't been well used. Which is why I'm so happy to see this demographically driven growth in agriculture producing more stable developments. I mean, you can look at, if you look at African growth since 2014, the end of the China boom, Africa didn't collapse into acute negative growth as it did after previous cycles. And my feeling is that a lot of that is down to the fact that now you've just got this more diverse economy. So I think with the minerals, I mean, I hope that governments are learning some of the lessons from previous commodity cycles. I don't say for a moment that Africa shouldn't think about its commodities. If you can sell it, you should. One of the big questions going forward will be whether governments manage to exercise bargaining power to have minerals used for manufacturing within Africa. There are efforts to do this around the seven main minerals that are used in battery production. It isn't yet clear what that's going to lead to, but it can obviously make a big difference. I mean, Jokowi and Indonesia was pretty successful in negotiating with Chinese companies in particular for local manufacturing production if they wanted access to nickel and other minerals that the Indonesians produce. So we just have to wait and see if African governments can replicate that. And I think that for me is going forward is the biggest unknown in Africa is the extent to which governance will respond to thicker populations, greater growth, greater capacity to raise taxes, and therefore expand the capabilities of government. To what extent will African governments respond to this more benign, positive environment and up their game? And I just don't know. The only thing that I would say with some confidence is there's going to be phenomenal variation between countries.
Marian Sumset Webb
Let's take you back a little bit to China we were talking about earlier and the rise of Chinese investment into manufacturing in Africa. And obviously there's been lots of Chinese involvement in the mining sector as well. But one of the things that people worry about now pretty much across the continent is the amount of money that the Chinese of one way or another lent into Africa. And there's a high level of debt that lots of African countries now have for infrastructure projects in particular, and that might sort of slightly imprison them in the future.
Jo Stadwell
I tried to stand back from this, and I feel that the Chinese influence in Africa overall has been significantly positive because Chinese banks have lent over $150 billion. Now, it was not done in a terribly clever way. I mean, the Chinese themselves will say privately at least that, yes, we were bloody stupid with some of the things that we did. I don't think that they went in with a sort of agenda to get people into debt bondage. What they wanted to do was lend money to support the purchase of Chinese goods and services because China is in Africa fundamentally for the same reasons that the Japanese were in Southeast asia in the 70s and the 80s, and the Koreans were in the Middle east in the 80s and the 90s, building infrastructure and selling capital goods and selling consumer goods. They're there because they've run this economic development policy where you massively overemphasize the role of manufacturing, you subsidize heavily manufacturing your economy, and you end up with surplus. And that surplus has to go somewhere. So what the Chinese are doing with a surplus in Africa is entirely the same as what the Japanese were doing with it in the 70s and the Koreans in the 80s. The thing to recognize is that where the Chinese have got to now is that at a political level, Belt and Road has been very heavily wound down. Not with any formal announcement of it's over, but I mean, they've just pulled back and various agencies that have been set up by the Chinese banks to do private equity in Africa and things like this have just been shuttered. I mean, there are some projects that are funded by state banks, but they've got to jump over much higher hurdles to get done. But what we're seeing when we talk about investment in manufacturing is private sector stuff from Chinese corporates that are not getting the backing of the state banking system.
Marian Sumset Webb
Should we talk about some individual countries? Where are you most optimistic? Where do you look and think, well, that's the new Singapore?
Jo Stadwell
Well, the one that claims to be the new Singapore is Rwanda, of course. And you think this is insane when you hear it, but actually there's a certain logic to it, you know, because Kagami's people say, well, look, it costs you a couple of thousand dollars to ship a container from China to Dar es Salaam, and it costs you $5,000 to truck it to Kigali. So that means that you can produce stuff here in Rwanda and not even be particularly efficient. Put it together here and sell the stuff. They haven't really done it with manufacturing yet, but they have done it with services. And of course a lot of Singapore is services in the book that says brutal but developmental. And I think that's what it is. And it is a very real question when you have acutely poor, malnourished people about what is the right priority. And Kagame will tell you that the right priority is to increase GDP and
Marian Sumset Webb
reduce poverty ahead as quickly as possible. Where would you go back to in a hurry?
Jo Stadwell
I was really upset to see the civil war that broke out in 2020 in Ethiopia because they were second most populous nation in Africa and they really have been getting the tracks set down in the right way. I will certainly go back to Ethiopia. I'd probably go back soon because I want to see where they are at now under Abi. I think my guess is that they will continue to do relatively well because I just think they've got the basics in place and the commitment to smallholder agriculture that they have, the commitment to manufacturing that they have the willingness to engage in a bit of financial repression to support those two things. I feel that all of that is still there and they have a really excellent civil service that has been doing this for 30 years now. So I remain somewhat optimistic about Ethiopia. I'm also strangely optimistic about Nigeria. I mean, I think everybody should go to Lagos just to see the mayhem. They say that 90% of the population wakes up every morning and doesn't know how it will eat, but everybody does eat by the end of the day. Yeah. I mean if ever you wanted an exercise in understanding just how a great density of people can produce a lot of creativity and a lot of value, then I think Lagos is a very good place to go and you get other places that are of interest. Benin, also in West Africa, very small country. But Patrice Talon, who ran the country for two terms semi autocratically but got very focused on development and his deputy has now taken over, won an election and taken over from him. So I think there's something to be positive about there. But I think it's probably a mugs game to try and pick winners in Africa. And I, you know, I prefer just to stand back and say I'm optimistic about the or I'm more optimistic about the thing overall than I would have been by a big margin than I would have been 20 years ago.
Marian Sumset Webb
Okay, brilliant. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for listening to this week's Marian Talks Money. If you like our show, rate, review and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and keep sending questions or comments to marianmoneyloomburg.net you can also follow me and John on X or Twitter. I'm errylessw and John is JohnStepek. This episode was hosted by me, Mary and Zumzep. Web. It was produced by Sama Saadi and Moses Andam. Sound designed by Blake Maples and Aaron Casper.
Commercial Narrator
Lots of places can expose you to identity theft. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity, which is way more than anyone can do on their own. If we find anything suspicious, like new loans or changes to your financial accounts, we alert you right away, all through text, phone, email or the LifeLock app. Save up to 30% your first year. Visit lifelock.com iheart Terms apply if you're
Marian Sumset Webb
feeling off fatigue, mood changes, skin shifts, yet your lab say everything's normal. You're not alone. Meet Oestra from Inner Balance, the first all in one prescription Strength Bioidentical hormone cream that's natural and effective and only takes one drop, 10 seconds a day. Oester replaces five to six products women typically use to treat symptoms and is third party tested to ensure the highest quality. Visit innerbalance.com today to start feeling like yourself again. That's innerbalance.com you ever wonder how far
Commercial Narrator
an EV can take you on one charge? Well, most people drive about 40 miles a day, which means you can do all daily stuff no problem. Go to work, grab the kids at school, get the groceries and still have enough charge to visit your in laws in the next county. But they don't need to know that. And the best part? You won't have to buy gas at all. The way forward is electric. Explore EVs that fit your life@electricforall.org.
Date: June 1, 2026
Host: Merryn Somerset Webb
Guest: Jo Stadwell, journalist and author of How Africa Works: Success and Failure on the World’s Last Developmental Frontier
In this episode, Merryn Somerset Webb is joined by journalist and author Jo Stadwell to investigate the overlooked role of population density and demographic change in Africa’s economic development. They discuss why low population densities historically hindered African growth, how a population boom is fueling new momentum, and what this could mean for agriculture, manufacturing, and governance across the continent. The conversation draws comparisons to Asian growth stories, examines the pitfalls of the resource curse, and spotlights the importance of education and governance for Africa’s future.
[03:10–04:30]
[04:44–05:59]
Jo recounts sifting through literature on governance failures, corruption, civil and ethnic strife.
These issues, he argues, are "often symptomatic rather than fundamental" causes for slow development.
The real turning point for his theory: demographics and population density.
"When I got to the demographics that I felt I found something that had much more powerful explanatory potential." — Jo Stadwell [05:45]
[06:13–09:55]
Historically, post-WWII Africa had extremely low population density (<10 people/km²), limiting the formation of concentrated markets, tax bases, and ability to fund infrastructure.
For comparison: in 1960, Africa's largest cities had just 20,000 people each; Singapore/Shanghai were 10–25x larger.
The "mineral enclave" growth theory failed: mining does not generate deep, widespread development.
"The historical comparison for the population density that of Africa in 1960 was equivalent to Europe in 1500... and how much growth was there in Europe in 1500? Well, there wasn’t any." — Jo Stadwell [08:09]
[09:55–12:42]
Recent decades have brought population density to Southeast Asian 1960s levels, setting the stage for rapid growth.
Fastest agricultural output growth globally since 2000 (4%+ annually; e.g., Nigeria at 6%), driven by urban demand and peri-urban farming.
Agriculture is increasingly bifurcated: high-value, irrigated peri-urban farming vs. largely unchanged deep rural areas.
"Demand for food by value has tripled… African agriculture is becoming very bifurcated now..." — Jo Stadwell [10:59]
Agricultural output is now outpacing population growth (<3%); fertility and population growth rates are slowing, though from a high base.
[12:42–14:30]
Educating girls, even at the primary level, leads to sharply lower fertility and a bigger demographic dividend (more working-age vs. dependent population).
The “ideal” density is historically analogized around 50–70 people/km²—beyond that, the return to extra density diminishes and focus should be on reaping the demographic dividend.
Future projections: Africa reaching 4 billion by the century’s end, matching Asia.
"Even girls who just do primary school have a massively reduced propensity to have lots of kids during their lifetime." — Jo Stadwell [13:05]
[16:41–19:25]
Colonial-era African education was virtually non-existent (literacy rates: 16% overall, 5% for women in 1960).
Post-independence, African governments massively expanded primary education — the World Bank called this the fastest system build-out ever.
"Nowhere in the world has built education systems as fast as Africa… It’s genuinely extraordinary what’s been achieved here.” — Jo Stadwell [18:12]
Without this educational progress, demographic thickening wouldn’t have spurred the economic pick-up observed since 2000.
[19:25–23:36]
Major boom in agro-processing; over half of manufacturing capital expenditure is in this area.
Manufacturing wages now highly competitive (lower than China), attracting FDI, especially from Chinese firms.
Private Chinese investment in manufacturing is rising as Chinese manufacturing returns at home decline.
"The Chinese put over $12 billion into manufacturing investment in Africa last year... chasing better returns." — Jo Stadwell [21:43]
[23:36–26:03]
Africa’s trajectory is likely to mirror South East Asia (Indonesia, Philippines): conglomerate growth (example: Tanzania’s Buckrayza, mirroring Thailand’s CP Group), wide business diversification.
Not as “efficient” as North Asian paths (Japan, Korea, Vietnam), but steady progress nonetheless.
"It all feels to me quite Southeast Asian... It’s way less efficient developmentally than what you get in a Vietnam or China or Japan, but it’s not bad." — Jo Stadwell [25:25]
[26:05–28:48]
Commodity supercycles are only positive if the proceeds are well used. Past cycles saw mismanagement and fragility.
Current demographic-driven growth provides better economic resilience.
Africa’s ability to negotiate “value-add” for things like battery minerals could be key, echoing Indonesia’s recent successes (e.g., local production tied to resource access).
"In previous cycles, most of the money hasn’t been well used... a lot of [today’s stability] is down to this more diverse economy." — Jo Stadwell [26:43]
[28:48–31:24]
China’s $150B+ lending has been broadly positive, but often not carefully targeted; now Belt and Road is much reduced.
The real action is now private investment, not state-backed infrastructure loans.
"The Chinese influence in Africa overall has been significantly positive ... what we’re seeing ... is private sector stuff from Chinese corporates." — Jo Stadwell [29:15, 31:12]
[31:24–35:03]
This episode gives a nuanced, optimistic view of Africa’s future, grounded in deep historical perspective and fresh economic theory. Jo Stadwell contends Africa’s long-awaited growth era has arrived not because the problems of governance and corruption have been solved, but because the demographic foundation for economies of scale—especially booming, urban-driven agricultural demand—has finally been laid. As education and manufacturing gain ground and commodity reliance becomes less central, the future hinges on whether African governments can capitalize on their new fiscal space to deliver lasting progress.