The Nigerian Industrial Behemoth That Could Reshape the African Economy

**Joe Weisenthal** (0:03)
Hello, Odd Lots listeners, I'm Joe Weisenthal.

**Tracy Alloway** (0:06)
And I'm Tracy Alloway.

**Joe Weisenthal** (0:07)
We're the hosts of the Odd Lots podcast, and we've got something exciting for you.

**Tracy Alloway** (0:11)
That's right. So one of the best parts of hosting our podcast is we get to actually meet and interact with our listeners, and we know we have some listeners over in Los Angeles.

**Joe Weisenthal** (0:21)
That's right. So if you're in LA, we're going to be recording a live show, some live recordings at the Vermont Theatre in Hollywood on September 17th.

**Tracy Alloway** (0:30)
We have some really exciting guests lined up, have some really great conversations planned. So go ahead and get your tickets. You can find those over at bloomberg.com/oddlots, or click the link below in the show notes and come and say hi when you're there.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:49)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

**Joe Weisenthal** (1:04)
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

**Tracy Alloway** (1:10)
And I'm Tracy Alloway.

**Joe Weisenthal** (1:12)
I don't know what it is, Tracy. I kind of have this urge to do an Africa trip. Like I sort of want to go to some of these capitals, Lagos, Accra, Kigali, and so forth. Like, I don't know. I'm like, I've never been there and now I'm like, I'm kind of curious.

**Tracy Alloway** (1:26)
Well, you know, the urge to explore Africa is well documented among the history of men, of white men in particular, Joe. So really, you're just following your instinct here. That's right. Yeah.
I've been to Africa, various places, Morocco, Egypt, Tanzania, Mozambique, South Africa briefly. I have some insane stories I could tell you. But probably the one thing that stands out to me is the diversity of that particular continent, obviously. So Egypt is very, very different to a place like Mozambique. And I will say, you know, I saw a lot of development in places like South Africa, Egypt to some extent, Mozambique was one of the poorest places I've ever seen in my life, to the point where a lot of people don't even want money, they would just barter for goods, like an extra t-shirt in your luggage or something like that.

**Joe Weisenthal** (2:20)
It is pretty extraordinary just generally, you know. I think if you had gone back 50 years ago or something like that, you would have had this view that countries around the world over time converge economically, particularly in a world of free trade. The factories chase the countries that have the cheapest labor, etc.
Therefore, everyone in a world of free trade, you get this sort of like broad growth and wealth. But the extremes of outcomes over the last several decades has been truly extraordinary.

**Tracy Alloway** (2:54)
Absolutely. You have places like Nigeria, like Lagos, I think you mentioned, which seems to some extent be booming at the moment with higher oil prices. You have a very, very big IPO coming down the line.

**Joe Weisenthal** (3:07)
Yes. This is what I'm particularly interested in.
I met a listener, a Predator Alumnum and a Doxam when we were in London a couple of years ago. He's like, you guys really have to do an episode on this new oil refinery that's being built in Nigeria. Anyway, this is for him. I hope he's listening at this point, because-

**Tracy Alloway** (3:30)
It took two years, but we're doing it.

**Joe Weisenthal** (3:31)
We're doing it because there's the news today that Dangote Refinery, or sorry, the news this week, we were recording this August 20th, came out earlier in the week that they had secured $400 million ahead of planned IPO, that there's one billion in backing from a few other firms, and also that the founder of this company, he's also, I believe, he's one of the richest people in the world, and I don't think Dangote is anywhere close to being a household name.

**Tracy Alloway** (4:00)
No, and it's gonna be the biggest stock market listing in African history ever, so we should definitely talk about it, and I think it's good to talk about it in the context of why development in Africa has or hasn't happened in certain cases.

**Joe Weisenthal** (4:13)
Absolutely. Well, I'm very excited to say we really do have the perfect guest, someone we've never talked to on the podcast before, but it was probably an error because someone who's out writing and thinking has been very influential to people of our cohort over the last several years who are interested in things like industrial policy and so forth. We are going to be speaking with Joe Studwell, senior fellow at the Africa Urban Lab, senior visiting fellow at ODI Global, and the author of the recent book, How Africa Works. Of course, many readers may have read his previous book, How Asia Works, talking about how some of these East Asian economies got as wealthy as they did. So Joe, thank you so much for coming on Odd Lots.