Conversations on Transformation

S4 Ep9: Structural change in sub-Saharan Africa

Recorded at the 2025 annual conference of the Structural Transformation and Economic Growth Programme, held at the University of Oxford. We have a mental model of structural transformation, and we have decades of empirical data to test our ideas about how that process works. But does it happen in the same way everywhere? This question has been hard to answer, not least because in some parts of the Global South, data has been easier to locate that in others. New research uses macro and trade data on from Sub-Saharan Africa to analyse whether its development follows those familiar patterns. Tim Phillips spoke to two of the authors: Gaaitzen de Vries of the University of Groningen and Kei-Mu Yi of the University of Houston, and the Dallas Fed.

S4 Ep8: Rethinking urban transit

Recorded at the 2025 annual conference of the Structural Transformation and Economic Growth Programme, held at the University of Oxford. If you have ever tried the private minibus routes that millions of people in low-income countries rely on to get to work, to shops, or to school, they can seem chaotic. But would it require large or small policy tweaks to make them work efficiently, and what would those tweaks be? Based on his work in Cape Town, Lucas Conwell of UCL talks to Tim Phillips about how the private minibus networks, such a distinctive feature of urban transit, can improve their service when there is little room for public investment or regulation.

S4 Ep7: How land reforms in China helped women

Recorded at the 2025 annual conference of the Structural Transformation and Economic Growth Programme, held at the University of Oxford. In China, the Hukou system has traditionally controlled migration from rural areas to cities. But if structural transformation is powered by exactly that type of migration, how did the Hukou system affect the life chances of Chinese people? Ting Chen of Hong Kong Baptist University is one of the authors of a new paper that examines how policy influenced patterns of migration for women and men. She discusses the Hukou system, the reforms to it, and how that changed the life chances of millions of women, with Tim Phillips.

S4 Ep6: Land inequality and rural structural transformation

Recorded at the 2025 annual conference of the Structural Transformation and Economic Growth Programme, held at the University of Oxford. We know that inequality has an impact on development – but there are many types of inequality, and equally many ways to measure it. One of its most important dimensions, especially at the early stages of the transformation of an economy, is land inequality. Harrison Mitchell of the University of California San Diego talks to Tim Phillips about the empirical relationship between rural landholding inequality in one large state in India, agricultural productivity, and the emergence of other ways to earn money.

S4 Ep5: Nigeria’s gas flaring problem

Recorded at the 2025 annual conference of the Structural Transformation and Economic Growth Programme, held at the University of Oxford. For many economies in the Global South, fossil fuel extraction has been both a blessing and a curse. Nowhere more so than Nigeria, where oil production generates huge revenues, but also creates an environmental and social burden for the people who live in oil producing regions. Arinze Nwokolo of Lagos Business School has investigated one aspect of this burden: how gas flaring that occurs as part of the oil production process affects local agriculture. He talks to Tim Phillips about the dramatic impact it has on agricultural productivity, and how the policy alternatives can change those outcomes.