In May 2025, I had the honor of delivering the keynote speech at the RMB – Rand Merchant Bank’s 2025 Think Summit in Cape Town, South Africa. I spoke about Africa’s Growth and Position in the Global Economy. The summary of my talk is thus: to achieve prosperity, equity and stability, African countries must industrialize … More Keynote Speech: Africa’s Growth and Position in the Global Economy
I gave this presentation, from a paper I am currently (still) writing, on “the politics of industrialization in Africa” at the Princeton University’s annual “Catalyzing Macroeconomic Policy for Development in Sub-Saharan Africa” conference on February 24, 2023. More to come in this space.
I recently published a paper entitled, “How Can African Countries Participate in U.S. Clean Energy Supply Chains?“, on October 4, 2023 to be precise. The paper examines the recent major pieces of U.S. climate-related legislation—the Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act—and identifies three opportunities for … More How Can African Countries Participate in U.S. Clean Energy Supply Chains?
In April 2022, I was featured in The Africa Report’s special report on “African Voices in Washington D.C.” The report is a seven-part series that includes a background piece, entitled “Meet the Africans running programmes at influential U.S. think tanks” that explains how the D.C. think tank landscape is changing with the appointment of people … More I was Profiled in The Africa Report’s Special Report on African Voices in Washington D.C.
In the run-up to the 2021 UN Climate Summit COP26 in Glasgow, I co-authored this important new report with eight other energy and development experts from across Africa and the US on “Reframing Climate Justice for Development: Six Principles for Supporting Inclusive and Equitable Energy Transitions in Low-Emitting Energy-Poor African Countries“. The full report can … More Reframing Climate Justice: Low Income Countries and the Energy Transition
In October this year, some of my decade-long work and ideas on economic diversification in Africa was profiled in the New York Times. Very thankful to Peter Coy, the economics columnist and writer for the NYT, for finding my ideas interesting enough to devote an entire article to showcasing them with diligence and respect. Read … More My Work on Economic Diversification is Featured in the New York Times
In September 2020, I co-authored this short essay on how safety nets can help ease the social and economic impacts of COVID-19. It was initially published on the World Bank blogs and later republished by the CFI magazine. Across the world, governments have geared up to respond to the socio-economic shock of the coronavirus pandemic. … More Can Safety Nets Ease the Social and Economic Impacts of COVID-19 in Africa?
My paper has just been published by the journal, African Affairs. Drawing on my doctoral research, the article has been four years (!) in the making, and I’m so excited and relieved that it is finally out. I had initially published it as a working paper in 2016, and its gone through a lot of … More Journal Article: the Successes and Failures of Economic Reform in Nigeria’s Post-Military Political Settlement
As you know, I recently co-authored a report on “The Future of Work in Africa: Harnessing the Potential of Digital Technologies for All”. I’m sharing below, some outputs from activities around the report. Here is a video of the report launch at Brookings Institution on 17 October 2019.
I co-wrote this blog post for the World Bank’s blog series to explain our new report on “The Future of Work in Africa: Harnessing the Potential of Digital Technologies for All“. We identify certain productive investments needed in African countries to secure for more and better jobs. I am reproducing it below, and you can … More Blog Post – The Future of Work in Africa: Making Productive Investments for More and Better Jobs
Our new World Bank report, “The Future of Work in Africa: Harnessing the Potential of Digital Technologies for All” was recently published. I’m very pleased to have co-authored this publication on such a critical topic on the agenda of governments across Africa. My colleagues and I examine the roles of skills, informality and social protection … More New Report Published: The Future of Work in Africa
The Africa’s Pulse, is a bi-annual macro-economic update of the state of the continent. Each edition also features one or two special topics. It is published by the Office of the Chief Economist in the Africa Region of the World Bank. The April 2019 edition featured two special topics: ‘Implementing Regional Solutions to Address Fragility … More Taking the Pulse of the Economies in African Countries
I recently wrote this piece for The Conversation. A consistent feature of global analyses of Africa’s economic prospects is their fickleness. In the years since the global financial crisis in 2008, forecasts about Africa have swerved from deep pessimism to heady optimism, and back to a bearish outlook of slow growth and fragility. The vacillation … More To transform Africa’s economies, African companies matter too
On 29 February 2016, I participated in a panel discussion on the above subject, ‘China and Global Development: Different Perspectives on Africa’. This was at the School of Public Policy, Central European University, Budapest, alongside, Professor George Wu (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and Professor Chris Alden (London School of Economics and Political Science). The … More China and Global Development: Different Perspectives on Africa
Happy New Year! On 3-4 November 2015, I was at a conference organised by the Friederich Ebert Stiftung (FES) foundation on ‘New Industrial Policy in Africa: Overcoming the Extractives Trap’ in Atananarivo, Madagascar . The conference was organised to discuss attempts by African countries, especially resource producers and exporters to cope with the ongoing collapse in … More New Industrial Policy in Africa: Overcoming the Extractives Trap
Zainab Usman 