In a new contribution to the OPEC Fund for International Development’s 50th anniversary publication, TIDE Director Amir Lebdioui reflects on a deceptively simple question: why do some development strategies succeed while others fail, even when countries appear to follow the same policy “recipe”?
Drawing on examples from South Korea, China, Chile, Costa Rica and Viet Nam — as well as his mother’s couscous — Amir argues that successful industrial policy depends less on finding the perfect formula than on building the capacity to experiment, learn and adapt.
For the green transition, this means moving away from rigid, long-term bets towards adaptive industrial policy: institutions capable of responding as technologies, markets and geopolitical conditions change.
The article appears in the OPEC Fund’s commemorative publication 50 years of the OPEC Fund, which looks both at the institution’s history and at the challenges shaping the next half-century of development.
Cite the article: Lebdioui, A. (2026), “What my mother’s couscous teaches us about green industrial policy,” in Fifty Years of the OPEC Fund, OPEC Fund for International Development, pp. 169–171.