Philippe Vogeleer is a chartered director specialized in partnerships between companies, governments, and international organizations. Until March 2024 he was the Global Head of Corporate Business Development for Vodafone. Prior to joining Vodafone, Philippe held senior positions for Ooredoo, Orange, and Deloitte. He has lived in 10 countries and worked in more than 100. He holds a master’s degree in law, a master’s degree in media and communications, and an Executive MBA. Philippe now advises a small number of companies as Non-Executive Director and supports the work of international charities, including Global Citizen. He is also a Visiting Lecturer at INSEAD.

We start our conversation by learning about Philippe’s international background, his early interest in human development, and how he discovered the importance of mobile phones and satellite technology. We then take a stroll through the decades with Philippe highlighting the big business opportunities for the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector in each time period - from radio waves in the 1980s and 90s, to networks and services in the 2000s and 2010s. He also reminds us that most people don’t have a laptop, accessing digital tools only on mobile phones, and that today’s opportunity lies in bringing access to the devices.

We then shift to discussing how we can define the ICT sector and what we mean by digitalization. Also, we ask Philippe to help us understand what fragility looks like on the ground, from an ICT perspective, and how the ICT industry and digitalization can help counter fragility. This leads us to talk about what is needed to build a business case in fragile states or even in conflict areas, how you can engage external partners, and how to convince internal decision makers to take on the risk of investing under more difficult conditions. We also discuss the benefits of digitalization for governments, the main obstacles to closing the digital divide, and the role of AI in digitalization. We wrap up our conversation by considering the finite nature of money, how it can best catalyze digitalization, and the potential future for the ICT industry.

Watch or listen to the episode for so many more insights from Philippe Vogeleer!

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Philippe Vogeleer

philippe.vogeleer@globalpartners4digitaldevelopment.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/global-partners-for-digital-development

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Mihaela Carstei, Paul M. Bisca, and Johan Bjurman Bergman co-host F-World: The Fragility Podcast.

X: https://x.com/fworldpodcast

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fworldpodcast/

Website: https://f-world.org

Music: "Tornado" by Wintergatan. Many thanks to Wintergartan for allowing us to use their wonderful music! This track can be downloaded for free at www.wintergatan.net.

Video editing by: Alex Mitran - find Alex on Facebook (facebook.com/alexmmitran), X (x.com/alexmmitran), or LinkedIn (linkedin.com/in/alexmmitran)

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00:00 Introduction

00:02:11 Philippe’s background – people, places, ideas that charted his path

00:08:16 ICT’s big business opportunities through the decades

00:14:02 What is digitalization? What is the ICT sector?

00:18:13 What is fragility? What does it look like from an ICT perspective?

00:26:15 How can ICT and digitalization help counter fragility?

00:34:30 The business case for digitalization in fragile states and low-income countries

00:45:31 Digitalization benefits for governments

00:54:30 Obstacles to closing the digital divide

01:00:28 The role of AI in digitalization: risks or benefits

01:08:56 The finite nature of money & how to best catalyze digitalization

01:14:01 Potential future for the ICT industry

01:21:03 Wrap-up

Stefan Dercon is Professor of Economic Policy at Oxford University, where he also directs the Center for the Study of African Economics. The author of 5 books and many studies, Stefan has had a distinguished career as an academic and policy advisor on economic development. His accomplishments are many. To name just a few:  between 2011 and 2017, he was Chief Economist of the Department of International Development (DFID), the government department in charge with the UK’s aid policy and spending; between 2020-2022, he was the Development Policy Advisor to successive Foreign Secretaries at the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

Stefan is a virtuoso of development! His approach to our conversation was equal parts exciting and instructive, a style that also comes across in his writing, making his book very hard to put down.

We start by learning about Stefan: his experience growing up in Belgium, being taught by Catholic priests about African socialism, Ujamaa and Julius Nyerere, and Marx and discovering his interest in economics as a means of pursuing development. His early career in Tanzania and Ethiopia highlighted the relationship between risk and poverty and the need to consider uncertainty when engaging in policy advice or research. We then shift to talking about the four propositions that compete as diagnoses of core problems of poverty and development that Stefan outlines in his book: poor initial endowments, market failures that trap the poor in poverty, market failures that are costly for poor countries, weak institutions. He gives us an overview and tells us why the propositions fall short on explaining the successes and failures of development. We also talk about the most important trends in development in recent decades: the dramatic decrease in poverty globally, the Africanization of poverty, and the increasing concentration of poverty in fragile states.

The conversation then turns to the elites, what values drive them, and why would they gamble on a development bargain.  We talk about the role of natural resources, political systems, and how external actors can influence the emergence of development bargains. We also discuss the role of Western and Chinese elites in development bargains and what is good policy advice.

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Stefan Dercon

Website: https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/people/stefan-dercon

X: https://twitter.com/gamblingondev

LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/stefan-dercon-45927b104

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Mihaela Carstei, Paul M. Bisca, and Johan Bjurman Bergman co-host F-World: The Fragility Podcast. 

X: https://twitter.com/fworldpodcast

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fworldpodcast/

Website: https://f-world.org

Music: "Tornado" by Wintergatan. This track can be downloaded for free at www.wintergatan.net.

Video editing by: Alex Mitran - x.com/alexmmitran, linkedin.com/in/alexmmitran

EPISODE RESOURCES

Stefan Dercon, “Gambling on Development: Why some Countries Win and Others Lose,” Hurst, London, 2022. https://www.gamblingondevelopment.com

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00:00 Intro

00:01:24 Stefan’s background

00:02:49 Economics of poverty

00:04:16 Connection between risk & poverty

00:08:16 Brief overview of development thinking

00:14:57 Recent trends in development

00:19:55 The Africanization of poverty & What is fragility

00:25:39 The problem of fixed mental models of fragility

00:28:47 Who are the elites

00:41:11 The gambling in development bargains

00:47:24 What values drive the elites

00:54:25 Natural resource & political systems in dev. bargains

00:58:51 The role of Western & Chinese elites in dev. bargains

01:09:14 Are the elite bargains in the West still dev. bargains

01:19:09 Citizens’ role in dev. bargains

01:29:22 External actors & the emergence of dev. bargains

01:41:28 “Peace is ugly” – can international institutions accept it

01:51:20 Development is 50% history & 50% agency

02:00:40 Private sector role in the dev. bargain

02:09:48 What is good policy advice

02:19:56 Wrap-up

Hannes Mueller is a tenured researcher at the Institute for Economic Analysis, a researcher center of the Spanish National Research Council. He also directs the master’s program in Data Science for Decision Making at the Barcelona School of Economics. Most recently, his research focus has been on how conflict can be predicted using millions of newspaper articles – a project which drives the conflictforecast.org website. This research project has become a key resource for global work on conflict prevention and has led to collaborations with the Spanish Central Bank, the German Federal Foreign Office, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, the UN, World Bank, and many others.

This conversation was a tour de force and covered a lot of topics: from taxes and trust, to fiscal capacity as a dimension of state capacity, to fragility and the macroeconomic implications of violent conflict, to forecasting conflict using machine learning and implications for policy makers.

Hannes gives us a live demonstration of conflictforecast.org and if you’re interested in how AI can help us forecast conflict then this is the conversation for you!

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Hannes Mueller

Website: https://www.hannesfelixmueller.com

Conflict forecast: https://conflictforecast.org

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannes-mueller-research/

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Mihaela Carstei, Paul M. Bisca, and Johan Bjurman Bergman co-host F-World: The Fragility Podcast. 

X: https://twitter.com/fworldpodcast

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fworldpodcast/

Website: https://f-world.org

Music: "Tornado" by Wintergatan. This track can be downloaded for free at www.wintergatan.net.

Video editing by: Alex Mitran - find Alex on Facebook (facebook.com/alexmmitran), X (x.com/alexmmitran), or LinkedIn (linkedin.com/in/alexmmitran)

EPISODE RESOURCES

Timothy Besley and Hannes Mueller. 2012. Estimating the Peace Dividend: The Impact of Violence on House Prices in Northern Ireland. American Economic Review.

Timothy Besley, Hannes Mueller, Fiscal Capacity and State Fragility In: Macroeconomic Policy in Fragile States. Eds: Ralph Chami, Raphael Espinoza, and Peter Montiel, Oxford University Press (2021). International Monetary Fund. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198853091.003.0009

Hannes Mueller, Christopher Rauh, The Hard Problem of Prediction for Conflict Prevention, Journal of the European Economic Association, Volume 20, Issue 6, December 2022

Hannes Mueller, Christopher Rauh, & Alessandro Ruggieri. 2022. Dynamic Early Warning and Action Model, Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 2236.

TIMESTAMPS

(00:00:00) Introduction

(00:01:17) Hannes’s background

(00:03:26) Shock therapy in Poland vs. Russia

(00:05:42) How Hannes’s interest in politics shapes his research

(00:09:09) Institution formation, fragility, & fiscal capacity

(00:16:05) Trust, taxation, & public services

(00:22:06) What is fragility

(00:29:32) Relationship between fragility & violent conflict

(00:33:11) Macroeconomic implications of conflict

(00:37:21) Does conflict always lead to fragility

(00:41:21) Forecasting fragility vs causal understanding

(00:43:42) Human factors & forecasting fragility

(00:50:42) Prevention & forecasting

(00:55:09) Why is conflict prediction a hard problem

(00:58:19) Machine learning for conflict prevention

(01:03:21) What is a good model for conflict prevention?

(01:11:05) Text availability by language for training the model

(01:15:54) Conflictforecast.org demo

(01:25:31) What can you ask the model & what you shouldn’t ask

(01:37:47) How can the model inform policy action & prevention

(01:44:36) How can conflictforecast.org augment human decision making

(01:49:51) The role of stabilizing factors in cross country comparisons

(01:54:22) Hannes’s data wish list

(02:01:26) Do LLMs like ChatGPT impact the model’s performance

(02:04:37) Is there a role for sentiment analysis

(02:08:45) Future research goals

(02:13:08) Institutional myopia

(02:15:27) Should we bring back salons

(02:19:15) Wrap-up