RED co-founder and author of How to win elections in Africa, Chude Jideonwo, a few days ago in an interview with the Yale Africa Initiative discussed his new book, insights from his time working with youth engagement in African elections, and his next steps after the Yale World Fellows program.

What’s next for you, now that the book has been released and your time at Yale as a World Fellow is coming to an end?

I am excited about Joy, Inc. So excited. The work will have me criss crossing Sub Saharan Africa and America, largely because the research and the resources that help aid the work are here, but the primary audience that drives my passion is on the continent. I am working with partners to gather the resources to map out the problems, possibilities and potentials across faith, psychology and social movements so we can have an evidenced approach to our work, and I am so excited to begin to deploy.

There is so much work to do. So much work to do. Yale has been a blessing. It has deepened, expanded and strengthens my vista and my resolve. The thinkers, doers and builders I have met through this programme across New Haven, DC, New York, and everywhere else have me so excited. The world has come to a stage where everything we assumed – the liberal consensus, capitalism and the wealth of nations, self interest and the cunning of reason, the rationality of markets and human behaviour – everything has been turned upon its head. Those assumptions have led us to this depression epidemic across the world, a fundamental hopelessness and cynicism and the anti establishment rage that has taken over the youth.

We are at a time in our history when we have the impetus to rethink everything from Adam Smith to Alexis de Tocqueville. I tell people that the fact that Richard Thaler just won the Nobel Prize for Economics, a year after another behavioural economists is a really big deal. A really huge deal. We are at the cusp of fundamentally rethinking our assumptions about human behaviour, and rethinking the metrics for measuring human success and flourishing. These are historic times we live in. People need to know this. People really need to know this in their souls. We need another interview for that. I am struggling to fit in all of that expansiveness into this one conversation!

Read the full interview here.