Why do our strategy theories fail when confronted with the realities of one of Africa’s most essential informal businesses – minibus taxis? Can a drop in interest rates reduce speeding and crashes? How is the government free-riding on the work (and risk) of taxi entrepreneurs?

In this episode of the Our Long Walk podcast, Johan Fourie and Jonathan Schoots speak with Christopher Eaglin, assistant professor in the strategy area at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. Before academia he worked with non-profits, large firms and, crucially, South Africa’s least understood industry: minibus taxis.

Some of Chris’s mentioned work:

The Need for Speed: The Impact of Capital Constraints on Strategic Misconduct

This podcast is produced with the help of Voice Note Productions. Our producer is Vasti Calitz with editing done by Andri Burnett. Kelsey Lemon provided helpful research assistance.

For more information about the episode and to subscribe to Johan’s newsletter, visit ourlongwalk.com.

What advantages did cowrie shells and beads have over coins in Africa? Is mobile money a revolution, or just the latest chapter in Africa's long history of monetary innovation?

In this episode, Johan Fourie and Jonathan Schoots speak to historian Karin Pallaver about the long history of money in Africa. Karin works at the intersection of economic history, anthropology and archaeology, tracing how shells, beads, metal and paper – and now pixels – have carried value and power across the continent.

Karin Pallaver is Associate Professor of African History at the University of Bologna. She previously worked as a researcher in the Coins and Medals Department at the British Museum in London.

This podcast is produced with the help of Voice Note Productions. Our producer is Vasti Calitz with editing done by Andri Burnett. Kelsey Lemon provided helpful research assistance. For more information about the episode and to subscribe to Johan’s newsletter, visit ourlongwalk.com.

What can we learn from uncertainty? How can using beans help with measuring uncertainty? And are we really living in unusually uncertain times?

In this episode of the Our Long Walk podcast, my co-host Johan Fourie and Jonathan Schoots speak with Jenny Trinitapoli, Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago. Since 2008 she has led Tsogolo la Thanzi (TLT), a landmark longitudinal study of young adults in Balaka, southern Malawi, following the same respondents for more than a decade as they navigate relationships, sex and childbearing amid a severe AIDS epidemic.

Demographers love tidy bins; cross-national datasets demand them. Yet some domains are genuinely uncertain. Early in Jenny’s Malawi work, Likert-scale questions about HIV risk generated high rates of ‘don’t know’ and outright refusals. Rather than throw those away, the TLT team designed questions to measure uncertainty.

Some of Jenny’s mentioned work:

An Epidemic of Uncertainty

The Flexibility of Fertility Preferences in a Context of Uncertainty

This podcast is produced with the help of Voice Note Productions. Our producer is Vasti Calitz with editing done by Andri Burnett. Kelsey Lemon provided helpful research assistance.

For more information about the episode and to subscribe to Johan’s newsletter, visit ourlongwalk.com.

Why does mobile money reduce agricultural investment in rural areas—and what does this reveal about migration as a development tool? Is high-skilled emigration bad for countries, or can brain drain become brain gain?

In this episode of the Our Long Walk podcast, Johan Fourie and Jonathan Schoots speak with Cátia Batista, Professor of Economics at Nova School of Business and Economics and founder of the NOVAFRICA Research Centre. Trained at the University of Chicago, Batista runs field and lab‑in‑the‑field experiments on migration, remittances, financial inclusion and technology adoption, with projects stretching from Cape Verde and Mozambique to Kenya.

Some of Catia’s mentioned work:

Brain drain or brain gain? (in Science)

Mobile money

Irregular migration

This podcast is produced with the help of Voice Note Productions. Our producer is Vasti Calitz with editing done by Andri Burnett. Kelsey Lemon provided helpful research assistance.

For more information about the episode and to subscribe to Johan’s newsletter, visit ourlongwalk.com.

What is the difference between magic and religion – and why does it matter for economics?

In this episode of the Our Long Walk podcast, Johan Fourie and Jonathan Schoots speak with Paul Seabright, Professor of Economics at the Toulouse School of Economics and one of the most original voices on how humans cooperate. For nearly two centuries economists forgot that religious organisations were businesses as much as anything else, but in his new book, The Divine Economy: How Religions Compete for Wealth, Power and People, Seabright invites us to look beyond doctrine, at the activities and exchanges that keep the show on the road.This podcast is produced with the help of Voice Note Productions. Our producer is Vasti Calitz with editing done by Andri Burnett. Kelsey Lemon provided helpful research assistance. For more information about the episode and to subscribe to Johan’s newsletter, visit ourlongwalk.com.

What does a serious defence of modernity look like? In this episode of the Our Long Walk podcast, Johan Fourie and Jonathan Schoots speak with Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, philosopher of African political thought at Cornell University, about Táíwò argument that modernity is not a cultural label, nor a Western badge to be worn or discarded, but a set of commitments that any society can domesticate and make its own: individual dignity, the centrality of reason, and an open horizon of progress. Some of Femi’s mentioned work:Africa Must Be Modern: https://iupress.org/9780253012753/africa-must-be-modern/Against Decolonisation. Taking African Agency Seriously: https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/against-decolonisation/How Colonialism Preempted Modernity in Africa: https://iupress.org/9780253221308/how-colonialism-preempted-modernity-in-africa/This podcast is produced with the help of Voice Note Productions. Our producer is Vasti Calitz with editing done by Andri Burnett. Kelsey Lemon provided helpful research assistance. For more information about the episode and to subscribe to Johan’s newsletter, visit ourlongwalk.com. The podcast is also available on: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4VEH9dz... Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/za/podcast...

In a rapidly changing world marked by trade wars, shifting alliances, and resurgent nationalism, what can history teach us about the future of globalisation? Is America’s retreat from global leadership inevitable, and what might Britain’s past decline reveal about the potential paths ahead?

In the first episode of Season 2 of Our Long Walk, Jonathan Schoots and Johan Fourie talk to Tony Hopkins, Emeritus Smuts Professor of Commonwealth History at Cambridge University, about gentlemanly capitalism, globalisation, and the rise and fall of empires, among other topics.

Some of Tony’s work:

The Land Where Nothing Works: How Britain Lost the Plot (2024)

Capitalism in the Colonies: African Merchants in Lagos, 1851–1931 (2024)

American Empire: A Global History (2018)

This podcast is produced with the help of Voice Note Productions. Our producer is Vasti Calitz with editing done by Andri Burnett. Kelsey Lemon provided helpful research assistance.

For more information about the episode and to subscribe to Johan’s newsletter, visit ourlongwalk.com.

There’s an Igbo saying, quoted by Chinua Achebe, that goes like this: ‘A man who does not know where the rain began to beat him cannot say where he dried his body.’ It’s a fitting way to end Season 1 of the Our Long Walk podcast, a season shaped by the question: what can Africa’s history teach us about its present, and its possible futures?

In the final episode of this season, hosts Johan Fourie and Jonathan Schoots take a moment to reflect on the season. They talk about long arcs and short turns. About the origins of states, of elite contestation, of trade, urbanisation, industrialisation. About the weight of colonial legacies and the promise of post-colonial reinvention. From 100,000 years of human prehistory to today’s aid policies and trade wars, this season’s guests have shown us how deeply the past shapes the terrain on which African societies move.

The Our Long Walk podcast will be back in August with Season 2: new guests, new questions, same stubborn curiosity. But we would love your help shaping it. Send your suggestions, ideas, or complaints to johan@ourlongwalk.com.

Subscribe to Johan's newsletter ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

This podcast is produced with the help of Voice Note Productions. Our producer is Vasti Calitz with editing done by Andri Burnett. Kelsey Lemon provided helpful research assistance.