Why did so many African societies resist centralized power and what can this teach us about development today? In a new episode of Thought Supply, Nobel laureate James A. Robinson and development economist Lorenzo Casaburi explore how land, kinship, and traditional authority continue to shape economic outcomes across the continent. Their conversation challenges familiar assumptions, highlights the value of fieldwork, and makes a compelling case for strengthening African scholarship.

“Switzerland is like the role model for Nigeria. The problem is it took the Swiss 700 years to construct that, and the Nigerians don't have 700 years.” At the time of colonization there were probably 45,000 separate polities in Africa, Robinson explains, many of which organized politics in such a way as to make it very difficult to concentrate power.

How do traditional institutions remain so resilient?

Robinson describes how his years of research in Sierra Leone and Nigeria shifted his understanding of traditional leaders. Instead of colonial relics, chiefs often precede colonization by centuries and continue to enjoy strong legitimacy. Afrobarometer data confirms this: while citizens may criticize individual leaders, traditional authority remains widely respected.

Casaburi, drawing on his own fieldwork in Sierra Leone, highlights how this legitimacy plays out today. In agricultural supply chains, for example, chiefs are central to contract enforcement, ensuring that farmers honor agreements with traders. This role – informal but effective – illustrates what the two scholars repeatedly return to: many African institutions carry both economic downsides and profound social value. Where economics often sees inefficiency, anthropology may see insurance, community cohesion, or risk-sharing mechanisms.

Why land is much more than an economic resource

Land emerges as one of the conversation’s strongest connecting threads. Casaburi notes that land markets are expanding, supported by digital registries and formal titling systems. But modern property rights often collide with customary allocations, raising questions of fairness, authority, and ownership. For Robinson, the stakes are profound. In many communities, ancestors are buried under the family compound, and land is intertwined with spirituality, kinship, and history. Turning communal land into privately owned plots risks the Latin American pattern of the 19th century: market reforms that triggered massive land grabs and deeper inequality. Consequently, both scholars agree that land reform in Africa is not just a technical problem. It is a cultural, political, and historical one.

What happens when a society maximizes “wealth in people”?

A recurring idea in Robinson’s recent work is the shift from judging African institutions by Western benchmarks to understanding what Africans were optimizing for. Rather than wealth in assets, many societies valued “wealth in people”, dense networks of reciprocity, kinship, and obligation. This principle helps explain why:

• land remained collectively held,

• power was intentionally kept fragmented,

• many precolonial societies made it hard to build centralized states.

This principle also challenges familiar assumptions. In many African languages, the same word refers to “guest” and “stranger.” The default stance is openness, not exclusion, an insight that aligns with empirical evidence showing high levels of moral universalism in several African countries.

Why simple ideas help us make sense of a complex world

Despite Africa’s diversity, Robinson argues that general patterns matter. Just as it remains useful to speak of “Europe” even though it contains both Norway and Albania. Social science, he suggests, must find the balance between nuance and clarity: “Our job is not to say everything is complicated. Our job is to find the simple ideas that help people make sense of complexity.”

Fieldwork was decisive in shaping this view. From Botswana to Sierra Leone, Congo, and Nigeria, Robinson’s time in the field revealed what theory alone cannot: institutions only make sense when seen from within. Casaburi’s example from Kenya illustrates this in practice. Dairy farmers often prefer monthly payments, not because they misunderstand finance, but because they trust buyers to safeguard their earnings until the amount becomes meaningful.

A conversation about rethinking assumptions

At its core, the dialogue between Robinson and Casaburi is an invitation to rethink assumptions about institutions, development, and what counts as progress. Africa’s past, they argue, tells a different story than the one often taught in economics textbooks: one of intentional design, dense social bonds, and political systems that maximized stability rather than scale. And understanding this story matters, not just for academia, but for policymaking, collaboration, and how global development is imagined in the decades ahead.