Joe Studwell: belief

Transcript context

…But don’t they just need a bit to be left alone? I mean, Tatu City in Kenya is going pretty well, and the government hasn’t wrecked it, and there’s a lot of energy behind it and some capital. Isn’t that likely to succeed? It is if there’s a clear demand there to begin with and private-sector actors who are going to make it work. In that case, yes, the zone should always be left alone. For instance, outside Addis Ababa, there’s a successful Chinese-managed and Chinese-owned investment zone, and it does absolutely fine. So, that type of investment zone, I think, yes, just let people get on with it and leave them alone. I was thinking more of state-led investment zones where there’d been many failures, and that’s where African governments need to be more careful, more thoughtful, and more clearly committed when they open a zone, to making sure that it works. Should Africa experiment with charter cities?…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.