Ideas in Development

Ranking history

About the show

Latest episodes

• Does Africa need development economics?

  October 6, 2026 · 46 min

  If every development economist stopped their research tomorrow, would Africa's growth rate in 2040 look any different? Ken Opalo, associate professor at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service and author of the Substack An Africanist…

• GiveDirectly’s quest for scale

  September 22, 2026 · 55 min

  GiveDirectly started out as a small nimble team founded by PhD economists, who had a novel approach to ending poverty – just give cash. But they are no longer the new kids on the block, and have been scaling their operations rapidly in…

• How BRAC partners with governments to fight poverty

  September 8, 2026 · 50 min

  The ultra-poor graduation approach has one of the strongest evidence bases in development. Almost all of that evidence comes from NGO delivery – but true scale typically requires government delivery. Stephanie Brockerhoff, Director for…

• How to start an export boom

  August 18, 2026 · 31 min

  This interview was conducted by Exporters Without Borders (ESF), which incubates entrepreneurs to start new export industries in low and middle income countries. The video version of this podcast, an accompanying article, and their ongoing…

• Has development economics lost its way?

  July 7, 2026 · 53 min

  What should development economists be working on – and how does their work actually reach the people making decisions? Rachel Glennerster, President of the Center for Global Development, whose career spans the research and policy sides of…

• How global supply chains are built – and how to actually attract investment

  June 30, 2026 · 1 hr 4 min

  Bill McRaith spent his career building supply chains – from 1980s Britain, to a factory in Panyu, China in 1990, to Ethiopia three decades later. He joins Oliver Hanney to explain what really attracts manufacturing investment to a…

• Stefan Dercon on elite bargains and kickstarting economic growth (via the AUL Podcast)

  June 23, 2026 · 1 hr 25 min

  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…

• Moving billions towards evidence

  June 16, 2026 · 51 min

  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…