On #Nigeria: You never want to play host to other people’s wars. And you never want to internationalize your domestic security problems. Getting foreign assistance is fine. But you must always launder and domesticate it. You must always retain the initiative.

Ken says of Emancipation, it's his "best read of the year by far". Not too late to give as a gift this holiday season to anyone who wants to understand Africa's place in world history in the 20th century better.

Book Review: The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide, by @hofrench.bsky.social >> www.africanistperspective.com/p/book-revie...

I’m honored to have been selected for @voxdotcom’s #FuturePerfect25, a list of innovators, thinkers,  disruptors, and people on the ground who are advancing solutions for today’s (and  tomorrow’s) most pressing challenges in global health and development: www.vox.com/future-perfe...

Transformative national development (as opposed to nano-developmentalist nibbling at the margins) is the only way out of this. The sooner everyone is on the same page the better.

#COP30: Climate policymaking needs a developmentalist makeover via ⁦‪@AfricanBizMag‬⁩ african.business/2025/11/ener...

A podcast conversation with Lydia Polgreen @polgreen.bsky.social of the Times about my new book, The Second Emancipation, and about Africa's place in the world of today and tomorrow. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/12/o...

Hongera! (I’m sure there are those who disagreed with Mamdani on policy, but given the tone and tenor of much of the campaign, it’s nice to see that New Yorkers rejected deranged Islamophobia).

Guys. Everyone knows that all your parents’ cousins are your aunties and uncles.

Only way out of this is national development strategies. African policymakers should feel empowered to pursue pro-growth national development strategies. Don’t settle for marginal projects, regardless of who’s hawking them.

Raila Amolo Odinga: kenopalo.substack.com/p/raila-amol...

If the U.S. were a low-income country, right around now they'd have been hit with a range of economic sanctions designed to impoverish Americans into rising up to defend their democracy -- with predictable results.

The best thing is happening on the Substack!!! The share of subscribers based on the Continent is growing! www.africanistperspective.com

The geopolitics of international development (after foreign aid): www.africanistperspective.com/p/the-geopol...

How to build trust and capabilities for effective governance in Africa: world-bank-afronomics.captivate.fm/episode/how-...

It’s an odd time for anyone to be doubling down on deranged Islamophobia. www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...

Great to see that the UK Development Minister is reading @cgdev.org NRF @kopalo.bsky.social & Stefan Dercon fabians.org.uk/publication/...

What a graph. via @semafor.com

I've bored on before about my view that the hidden assumption of the Left is that economics is bad and nasty, therefore the worse and nastier you're being, the better economics you're doing. The worst boss is always a squishy liberal acting how she thinks a hard nosed capitalist would.

African Foreign Policy in a Multipolar Age #UNGA80 kenopalo.substack.com/p/african-fo...

Absolutely glorious.

This is an important argument that folk focused on climate and development would do well to engage with

The most unlikely degrowthers: open.substack.com/pub/kenopalo...

“It can’t happen here” … yeah right.

On the rise and fall of STEM education in Kenya: www.africanistperspective.com/p/what-does-...

One day writers and editors in major international magazines will learn that the Continent has 54 countries with lots of variation.

Mission 300, championed by the World Bank & the AfDB, among others, needs a new mission. Electrifying African firms for growth and development: open.substack.com/pub/kenopalo...

Tomorrow's article is on the history of Yoruba cities

Among other things, the story of the relationship between these two regions over the last two centuries (and likely the next two) is one shaped in non-trivial ways by demography.

There will be no economic takeoff in Africa without lots of large (private sector) firms: www.africanistperspective.com/p/there-will...

Highly recommended: www.ourlongwalk.com/p/africa-who...

I doubt that Trump has read Fearon (1995), so he’s probably just grasping for reasons to abandon the victim of a foreign invasion. www.jstor.org/stable/2706903

Your regular reminder to write, rewrite, and keep writing your own stories, with a good faith effort to maintain fidelity to truth.

What are we missing when we talk about the arbitrariness of African borders and their economic/political impacts: kenopalo.substack.com/p/on-africas...

The most complacent set of ruling elites in the world: www.africanistperspective.com/p/what-expla...

Americans keep talking about “strategic policy ambiguity.” Nope. What you have is a very familiar case of erratic personalist rule amidst entrenched institutional decay.

How Ethiopia avoided colonization in the late 19th century but then lagged behind in the 20th century: www.africanistperspective.com/p/how-ethiop...

Growth, growth, and more growth please.

the USA built a system of higher education so good that smart/rich people from across the world came here, spending billions to learn here, subsidizing education for Americans while spending money to live in our cities and towns. our government arbitrarily decided we should stop doing that

Well, if only the United States of America had Strong Western Institutions. Trump fires labor statistics boss hours after weak jobs report: www.nbcnews.com/business/eco...

the path to solving hunger, disease and poverty is subscribing to my substack and writing me lots of nice comments about how great I am

a deep exploration of urbanization and spatial unevenness in economic development, in the context of Kenya distance from the colonial railway line still correlates with deep inequalities, while urbanisation has not necessarily improved lives

Some thoughts on the sorts of policies that produced this map: kenopalo.substack.com/p/a-historic...

There will come a day when everyone will have always been against this.

Crazy coincidence how often [thing that will fix science of all of its ailments] coincides with [thing the speaker considers themselves an expert in]. Makes you think

We always assume that politicians optimize their chances of staying in office. But it’s also true that politicians can be bad at politics. This is the underlying theme of my take on the Kenyan opposition’s chances in 2027: kenopalo.substack.com/p/how-kenyas...

It’s cute seeing Americans debate whether the son of an Ugandan is Ugandan. Don’t they realize the ridiculousness of it all?

Global Climate Policy Must Take Local Politics Into Account www.worldpoliticsreview.com/climate-chan...

"To tackle the climate crisis, we cannot afford to pit climate action against development. To the contrary, climate policies in low-income countries must be—and must be seen as—developmentalist. ... Poverty is not a viable climate strategy." Great piece by @kopalo.bsky.social.