Keynote speakers

Prof Jayati Ghosh

Professor Jayati Ghosh is a Development Economist and Chair of the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), in India. She received her undergraduate education at Delhi University and her master’s education at JNU and her doctoral education at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.

Prof Ghosh is a founder of the Economic Research Foundation, New Delhi, and the Executive Secretary of the International Development Economics Associates (IDEAS), a network of economists critical of the mainstream economic paradigm of neoliberalism. A multiple award winner, Prof Ghosh received the United Nations Development Programme Prize for excellence in analysis for the West Bengal Human Development Report, for which she was the principal author.

Prof Ghosh has served as visiting professor at several universities around the world, including being the first Ragnar Nurkse Visiting Professor in Development Economics at Tallinn University of Technology in Estonia. She has also served on the World Health Organization’s Council on the Economics of Health for All.

Prof Adebayo Olukoshi 

Professor Adebayo Olukoshi is a Distinguished Professor at the Wits School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. He received his undergraduate education at the Ahmadu Bello University (Nigeria), and his doctoral education at Leeds University (United Kingdom).

Prof Olukoshi has served as Research Professor and Director of Research and Studies at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, Senior Research Fellow at the Nordic Africa Institute (Uppsala, Sweden), Senior Professional Staff at The South Centre (Geneva), Executive Secretary of the CODESRIA (the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa) in Dakar, Senegal; Director of the United Nations African Institute for Economic Development and Planning (Dakar, Senegal); and until recently, as the Director, Regional Office for Africa and West Asia of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (Sweden).

Prof Olukoshi is a multi-award winning scholar and recipients of several fellowships, including the Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Johannesburg (South Africa), and Rhodes African Research Fellowship at Oxford University.

Prof Fantu Cheru

Fantu Cheru is Emeritus Professor of International Political Economy at American University (Washington, DC) and Senior Researcher at the African Studies Centre, Leiden University (The Netherlands). He served as Associate Senior Fellow at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), and the North-South Institute in Ottawa, Canada. From 2007-12, he was the Research Director at the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala, Sweden. Previously, Dr. Cheru served as a member of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Panel on Mobilizing International Support for the New Partnership for African Development (2005-2007) as well as Convener of the Global Economic Agenda Track of the Helsinki Process on Globalization and Democracy, (Helsinki, Finland). Dr. Cheru also served as the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Foreign Debt and Structural Adjustment for the UN Commission for Human Rights in Geneva from 1998-2001.

In addition, Dr. Cheru has served both as an advisor and consultant to several governments and donor institutions including the UN Economic Commission for Africa, UNDP, UN-Habitat, SIDA, DANIDA, NORAD, among others. Among Professor Cheru’s publications include: Oxford Handbook of the Ethiopian Economy (with Chris Cramer and Arkebe Oqubay, 2018); Agricultural Development and Food Security in Africa: The Impact of Chinese, Indian and Brazilian Investments (with Renu Modi, 2013); Africa and International Relations in the 21st Century, co-edited with Scarlett Cornelissen and Timothy M. Shaw (Palgrave, 2011); The Rise of China and India in Africa (with Cyril Obi, 2010); African Renaissance: Roadmaps to the Challenge of Globalization (2002), and The Silent Revolution in Africa: Debt, Development and Democracy (ZED, 1989). His articles have appeared in numerous international journals: World Development; Review of African Political Economy; International Affairs; Third World Quarterly: Global Political Economy, among others. He currently serves on the editorial board of several academic journals.