Episode 8
Featuring Koffi Kouakou
Open source episodePart two of a North-South dialogue with Koffi Kouakou examines critical minerals, China's role, Western assumptions, and whether Africa can turn resource demand into leverage rather than another extraction cycle.
Koffi Kouakou and Michael Brown discuss Africa's youth surge, technology, and the competing paths toward transformation or instability.
Michael Brown concludes a three-part North-South dialogue with longtime colleague Koffi Kouakou on African realities, American assumptions, and the China factor. They examine Africa's youth surge, technology adoption, political risk, and the race between transformation and instability.
Read episode pageSource episodeA North-South dialogue on Africa's future, outside assumptions, China, and the limits of single-story narratives.
Michael Brown sits down with longtime colleague Koffi Kouakou for a North-South dialogue on African realities, American assumptions, and the China factor. They challenge single-story narratives about Africa and look at what outside observers routinely miss.
Read episode pageSource episodeUSAID has been dismantled. The World Bank's own evaluations keep finding what its projects don't achieve.
USAID has been dismantled. The World Bank's own evaluations keep finding what its projects don't achieve. So the question is no longer whether the aid architecture is broken — it's whether anything should replace it.
In the final segment of my three-part conversation with Dr. Emily Brearley — development economist, 25 years at the World Bank and other international institutions, and author of Aid Inferno: How to Reduce Poverty, Combat Global Warming, and Be a Good Person — we each put a blueprint on the table.
We agree on some fundamantal issues and disagree on some important details.
Emily's answer is what she calls Solution 42: sharply narrow what institutions like the World Bank attempt. Stick to the sectors they demonstrably do well. Build in transparency and citizen involvement in project selection and evaluation. Fund a small number of high-impact projects chosen by people in recipient countries themselves. It rhymes with Esther Duflo's evidence-first approach.
We also agree that a social contract is a fundamental missing piece — clear goals, trade-offs and obligations that people on the ground can actually hold institutions to that are negotiated. In 40+ years of fieldwork I never saw one written, and neither USAID nor the World Bank has ever framed a project in those terms. Emily agrees that's a major gap.
Where we diverge somewhat is on who does the work. Should nationals do everything, or is there a place for foreigners with unique capacity building contributions to make?
ABOUT THE GUEST Dr. Emily Brearley is a development economist and former World Bank economist with ~25 years across the World Bank and other international institutions, leading programs in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Aid Inferno is a case-study-driven critique built on World Bank evaluation data arguing that development finance rewards spending and institutional survival over outcomes and accountability.
ABOUT THE SHOW The Unpopular View is for the exhausted middle — evidence over outrage, and criticism that doesn't spare either orthodoxy. Hosted by Michael Brown, international development consultant and author of Redeeming REDD (Routledge, 2013) and Climate Mitigation in the Land Sector of the Global South (Routledge, 2026).
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