BWC Member Abdoulaye Ndiaye hosted a wide-ranging conversation with 2024 Nobel laureate James Robinson on Amani TV in Dakar, Senegal. The discussion traces Robinson’s intellectual journey from “The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development” and “Why Nations Fail” to his forthcoming book, The Wealth in People: A Theory of Africa, exploring how African societies’ historical emphasis on kinship and relationships over material wealth shaped political decentralization and drawing lessons, from Botswana’s traditional institutions to Senegal’s Mouride Sufi brotherhood, on how African agency and indigenous institutions can inform both African development and the wider world.

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