African economies remain highly dependent on primary commodity exports, vulnerable to the vagaries of world market prices. Diversification into manufacturing and other sectors has been a post-colonial priority but is even more essential now in the crisis-prone world. Climate, the pandemic, the Ukraine war have all exposed the need for greater resilience. In this interview I discuss with Carlos Lopes what African policy makers can learn from the lessons of East Asia’s development models of the 1950s to the 1980s. Developmental states of South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, and others used industrial policy to spearhead industrialization, growth, human investment, and poverty reduction. These experiences offer an alternative source of knowledge to the mainstream economic policy prescriptions and research of dominant international institutions.