This annotated list of influential Black African economists is not exhaustive in nature, but intended as a starting point for further inquiry. Supplied by Marlène Koffi, the list was annotated to support the article Black Economists of Influence in honour of Black History Month, 2024.
Updates and suggestions for additions to this list can be submitted by email to communications.economics@utoronto.ca
Yaw Nyarko of New York University is a specialist in economic development, theoretical economics, and the economics of migration. Among his many affiliations, he serves as Director of the Center for Technology and Economic Development (CTED) and as Co-Director of the Development Research Institute (DRI).
Roland Pongou of the University of Ottawa is currently a visiting scientist in the Department of Global Health and Population and an affiliate of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science. His research interests are in political economy, health, economic development, and economic theory.
Mesay Melese Gebresilasse of Amherst College specializes in development economics and applied microeconomics. He is a research affiliate of J-PAL Africa where
Harounan Kazianga of Oklahoma State University is affiliated with the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), Centro Studi Luca d’Agliano and the Development Economics Research Centre. His research interests cover the economics of education, agriculture, healthcare and development.
Nguedia Pierre Nguimkeu of Georgia State University. His research specialties include econometrics, statistical methods and data science. He has consulted with the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the African Development Bank, and the International Development Research Center among other organizations.
Francis Annan of the University of California at Berkeley is a specialist in development economics and microeconomics. His research focus is on digital financial markets, insurance, and firms in sub-Saharan Africa, India, and the US. He is affiliated with J-PAL and serves as the scientific lead and Co-Chair of the Retail Finance Distribution (ReFinD) Research Initiative at ISSER.
Belinda Archibong of Barnard College is a specialist in development economics, political economy, economic history and environmental economics with a focus on Africa. She is affililiated with Center for Development Economics and Policy (CDEP), The Earth Institute, the Institute of African Studies, the Institute for Research in African-American Studies, the Columbia Population Research Center (CPRC), and the Center for Environmental Economics and Policy (CEEP).
Isaac M. Mbiti of the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia is a specialist in economic development with a focus on human capital formation. He is especially interested in African economic development examining the role of education policies and the potential of new technologies. He serves as a J-PAL affiliate.
Modibo Sidibe of Duke University is currently a visiting scholar with the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. His focus in on urban and public economics, industrial relations, job search theory, and structural econometrics.
Ismael Mourifié is now a Professor of Economics at Washington University in St Louis. He serves as a research associate at the NBER (Labor Studies), an as associate editor at Journal of Econometrics, Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, and Econometric Reviews, and is co-editor of Annals of Economics and Statistics.
Marlène Koffi is an Assistant Professor in Economics at the University of Toronto. Her research interests are in the Economics of Innovation and Science. she is also interested in applying deep learning and Artificial Intelligence techniques for Economics studies and public policies.
Moussa P. Blimpo is Assistant Professor of Economic Inequality and Societies at the Munk School, University of Toronto. He serves as a faculty affiliate of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), and as a fellow of both the Energy for Growth Hub and The Global Labor Organization (GLO).
Kehinde F. Ajayi is Director of the Gender Equality and Inclusion Program and Senior Fellow of the Center for Global Development. Her work explores childcare, education, entrepreneurialism, gender and labour economics in African and global contexts.
James P Habyarimana of Georgetown is the Provost Distinguished Associate Professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy. He is a founding member of the Initiative on Innovation, Development and Evaluation (gui2de). He is also affiliated with J-PAL and was a non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development.
Désiré Kédagni of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a specialist in econometrics with a research focus on micro econometrics and causal inference. His publications include Biometrika, Journal of Econometrics, The Econometrics Journal, Journal of Applied Econometrics and European Economic Review.
Jean-Baptiste Tondji of the University of Texas at Rio Grande is a specialist in microeconomic theory, political economy, and the economics of organizations. He is a junior fellow of the Pan-African Scientific Research Council and a reviewer for Games and Economic Behavior (GEB).
Teddy Mekonnen of Brown University is a specialist in microeconomic theory, political economics, and industrial organization. He is a recent winner of the AER Excellence in Reviewing Award and the Henry Merritt Wriston Fellowship.
Edward Kutsoati of Tufts University is a past winner of the National Institutes of Health Research Grant, the NBER/Gates Foundation Grant, and the New Directions FRAC Research Award. His research primarily concerns applied microeconomics with a focus on incentives in organizations and macro-policy.
Mare Sarr of Penn State is a specialist in natural resource economics and management, institutional change and development, and political economy. His research has been published in in World Bank Economic Review, the Journal of Legal Studies, and Environmental and Resource Economics. He is an affiliate researcher with the Institute of Energy and the Environment and the Environmental Policy Research Unit (EPRU).
Leonard Wantchekon of Princeton University is the founder of the African School of Economics. He won the Kiel Institute’s World Economy’s 2023 Global Economy Prize and has developed novel approaches to studying the relationship between educational attainment and social mobility.
Sylvain Eloi Dessy of Laval University is an applied microeconomist whose research is focused on barriers to structural change with an emphasis on informal lending, child labour, and child marriage. He is an officer of the the Canadian Economics Association and affiliated with Partnership for Economic Policy (PEP).
Antoine A. Djobgenou of York University is a specialist in applied econometrics and financial economics. He recently published An Econometric Panel Data Model of the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Prosper Dovonon of Concordia University Specializes in the econometrics of large datasets. He serves as secretary of the Africa Standing Committee of the Econometric Society. He is a research fellow with Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en analyse des organisations (CIRANO).
Guy Tchente of Purdue University is a specialist in quantitative methods of spatial analysis. He serves as a fellow of the Global Labour Organization and the National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR).
Illenin Kondo of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis studies quantitative macroeconomic models of sovereign debt crises, trade-induced labor reallocation, and the optimal design of infrastructure networks. He serves as a member of the National Economic Association‘s (NEA) Committee on Macroeconomic Policy and Race. He is also a member of the steering committee of Mechanism Design for Social Good (MD4SG).
K.Ulrich Hounyo of the State University of New York at Albany is a specialist in econometrics and financial economics. He is a past winner of the Denis Sargan Econometrics Prize.
Aboulaye Ndiaye of New York University specializes in the impact of incentives in macroeconomic environments. He serves as a research affiliate of the Centre for Economic Policy Research.
Louphou Coulibaly of the University of Wisconsin at Madison maintains research interests in international economics and macroeconomics. He serves as a faculty research fellow with the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).
Emmanuel Yimfor of Columbia Business School has research interests in empirical corporate finance with a focus on entrepreneurial finance, venture capital, private equity, and financial intermediation. He has won the Inaugural Equal Opportunity Lab Scholar Award and is a Kenan Institute Distinguished Fellow.
Bocar Ba of Duke University focuses his research on the economics of crime and labor. He serves as a faculty research fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research and on the program committee of the American Law and Economics Association.
Kweku Opoku-Agyemang is the CEO and Chief Scientist of Machine Learning X Doing. He serves as an honourary affiliate of the International Growth Centre.
Romual Meango of the University of Oxford maintains research interests in micro econometrics, subjective expectations, and the economics of migration. He serves on the Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Global Working Group.
Angela Doku is Assistant Professor of Economics at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU). She is an applied microeconomist who specializes in environmental, development, and behavioural economics. She is particularly interested in policy questions concerning beliefs and environmental attitudes and actions; climate and development; and adolescent development.
Dozie Okoye is Professor of Economics at Dalhousie University. His research interests include economic growth, economic history and development, human capital , and technology adoption.
Binta Zahra Diop is the Kuznets Postdoctoral Associate at Yale EGC. She will join Boston College as an Assistant Professor in 2025. She is a past winner of the Edgeworth Prize for outstanding DPhil thesis in Economics, Oxford.
Francis Annan is Assistant Professor of Economics, at UC Berkeley (ARE) and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).
Mahounan Yedomiffi is Provost Faculty Fellow and Assistant Professor in Economics at Dartmouth College. His research interests include development economics, education, and labour.
Kevin Dano is Postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton University and will join the Department of Economics as an Assistant Professor in January 2025. His research interests are in econometrics with a focus on panel data and networks.
Amma Panin is Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Louvain. Here research interests lie in how risk and uncertainty shape economic decision making.
Marie-Christelle Mabeu is Assistant Professor of Economics at Toronto Metropolitan University. Her research interests are in microeconomics, development economics, family economics, and political economy.
Published 16 February, 2024. Last updated 5 December, 2024.
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