Now,

in africa, a couple of the countries that come across very well in your book, i mean, moderately well, are ethiopia and ruande. People will immediately say, well, these are the classic examples. And anyway, look at ethiopia now, from 20 20 it's descended into a civil war. Ruande, you know, many people point out that it is an authoritarian soc ty. They wonder what will happen post pol cagame. And they wonder if this is something waiting to blow what would you say, you know, in defence of those two countries? You're

right that i do talk quite a lot about ethiopia and a bit about anda. Well, i also talk about cenia as a place where i think progress is being made, and gana, which are very different political regimes. And i just to emphasize a defris not coming to this view of africa. Everybody must start looking like rondan ethiopia, otherwise hou will go wrong. But ethiopia is interesting because i called my book gambling on development. I think, to some extent, is a risk that a gamble on development in ethiopia has backfired. So if you think this period between two thousand and five and 20 20, when the ethiopian government, with all the s it had to hand, tinkering away, finding a way to actually progress, managed to actually start quite a lot of growth. My argument is somehow that on the economic side, they did probably quite well. They also wanted to see whether this economic progress could give them enough legitimacy with the population to allow them to actually continue to do this path. And i think the underlyin economic deal us. May be sensible, but the political deal in ethiopia, of course, was not at all inclusive. And i think the gamble misified by not paying anoughr attention to the political deal. You know, the political deal, in the end, is largely between the tigreans, amaras oromos, different nationalities, etne group. Some people would say, you know, running this country needs a deal between them. And probably until 20 19, the deal was too much in favour of the degreants, and it was just not tenable. But is it defeating my theory? I would say, while ll, the gamble is actually mis firing. As for randa, you know, i'm very cautious about it. Progress is being made, and of course, they came out of conflict caga ma very much try to use development as a source of legitimacy for the progress there. But i am quite ernt that, rather than a gradual opening off to space, which actually, in ethiopia they try to do in recent years, and it seems to have backfired, it still remains totally closed. And so you could ask yourself, can it continue being as close to this? And i think the jury is out. I'm not going to say, that's the example. I deftly don't want to encourage people to say, you must be authoritarian to be successful. Because atoray cease may sometimes do well, but we know from the data they also can do really terrible things in their own societies and economies.