Keynote & Panels - CSAE Conference 2025

BIOGRAPHY FOR PROF. ROBINSON
An economist and political scientist, Robinson has conducted influential research in the field of political and economic development and the relationships between political power and institutions and prosperity. His work explores the underlying causes of economic and political divergence both historically and today and uses both the mathematical and quantitative methods of economics along with the case study, qualitative and fieldwork methodologies used in other social sciences.

Robinson has a particular interest in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America and is a Fellow at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Nigeria at Nsukka. He taught a summer school at the University of the Andes in Bogotá between 1994 and 2022. He has conducted fieldwork and collected data in Bolivia, Colombia, Haiti, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. He has published three books co-authored with Daron Acemoglu, an Institute Professor of Economics at MIT. The first, Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, proposed a theory of the emergence of and stability of democracy and dictatorship. Their second book Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (translated into 41 languages since its publication in 2012), pulled together much of their joint research on comparative development and proposed a theory of why some countries have flourished economically while others have fallen into poverty. Their most recent book, The Narrow Corridor: States, Society and the Fate of Liberty, examines the incessant and inevitable struggle between states and society, and gives an account of the deep historical processes that have shaped the modern world.

He currently holds appointments in the Harris School of Public Policy and the political science department at the University of Chicago.

This session will begin with a brief presentation of the strategic plan of the AERC for the 2025-2035 period, outlining our vision and objectives for the future. We will highlight the key areas of focus, including how we aim to address current capacity and policy challenges and build on past achievements to drive sustainable economic development across Africa.

Following the strategic presentation, a policy panel will discuss the unprecedented changes Africa is facing today and the critical policy challenges that need to be addressed. The session will examine both short-term and long-term solutions to promote inclusive growth, address macroeconomic instability, manage recurring debt distress, mitigate unexpected fluctuations in development financing (e.g. current waves of cuts in humanitarian and development aid by major donors), and navigate changing geopolitical dynamics. Panellists will provide insights into how policies can be designed, implemented, and coordinated to effectively address these challenges and set Africa on a path to sustainable development.

Opening remarks & roadshow presentation: Prof. Victor Murinde, Executive Director, AERC, Nairobi, Kenya
Overview of the strategic plan for 2025-2035 and its relevance to addressing Africa’s capacity and policy challenges.
Policy Panel Discussion: Economic and Policy Challenges Facing Africa
A discussion on the current unprecedented changes in Africa, focusing on the policy challenges related to macroeconomic instability, environmental shocks, geopolitical shifts, and inclusive development.
Closing Remarks
Summing up the discussion and emphasizing the strategic priorities for addressing Africa's economic and policy challenges over the next decade.

BIOGRAPHY FOR ALEXANDRA FRASER

Alexandra Fraser is the CEO and founder of Viridian. Viridian is an impact agency that designs and delivers programs, research and strategic initiatives for early-stage entrepreneurs, investors and entrepreneur support organizations across Africa’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. Our programs act as a catalyst for these key economic actors, ultimately growing shared prosperity across Sub-Saharan Africa.

Alex has over 20 years’ experience in the early-stage investment space, is an angel investor, start-up advocate and is passionate about building a vibrant, sustainable high growth entrepreneurial ecosystem and culture across the continent, to drive economic growth and job creation. She is deeply embedded and connected with the African entrepreneurial, investment and innovation communities through her involvement with various organizations and as an independent strategic consultant. Alex’s early career included working for a biotech and medical device fund, before moving into technology transfer and commercialization, followed by a move into a newly established VC fund in South Africa where she was responsible for deal sourcing, analysis, due diligence, investment memo preparation and research. Since leaving VC, over the past 10 years, she has assisted a number of startups raise funding, provided independent DD services, mentored entrepreneurs on numerous accelerator programs and is a regular guest lecturer at a number of business schools.

Alex is also a founding member of ABAN (African Business Angels Network www.abanangels.org ); a co-founder of Dazzle Angels (www.dazzleangels.com) an early-stage fund focusing on increasing the number of women angel investors in South Africa and also to provide more seed stage funding for women-led businesses. Through Dazzle and other angel groups she is an active angel investor and has a portfolio of 8 businesses. Most recently, she co-launched and is a Lead Facilitator for the African Angel Academy (www.africanangelacademy.com), the first online training program for African angel investors, delivered by experienced angels. To date AAA has trained over 700 angels from 23 African countries and supported over 24 new angel groups. Alex also serves on the investment committee of Jaza Rift Ventures, an early-stage African healthtech fund.

Alex holds a BSc in Molecular Biology and a Post Graduate Diploma in Entrepreneurship from the University of Cape Town, a Master’s Degree in International Business and Emerging Markets from the University of Edinburgh and a Certificate in Company Directorship from the Institute of Directors, UK.

BIOGRAPHY FOR EGHOSA OMOIGUI

Eghosa Omoigui is the founder and Managing General Partner of EchoVC Partners (a seed & early-stage technology venture capital firm investing in underrepresented founders and underserved emerging markets). Before this, Eghosa was with Intel for nearly 10 years and his last role was as Intel Capital Director, Consumer Internet & Semantic Technologies, where he acted as a senior investment professional focused on platform-agnostic consumer, web services and digital media-based investment opportunities in the US, EU & Asia. Omoigui also drove ICap's stage-agnostic investment focus on next generation semantic technologies, AI, ML, smart data, AR and the realtime web. Eghosa was personally responsible for developing supporting theses and sourcing investment opportunities in various companies including AdMob, Jaiku, Powerset, Facebook, LinkedIn, Teracent, Qik and Pandora.

Eghosa has advised SWIFT (the inter-bank consortium) on technology innovation for financial services (InnoTribe), is a member of the ASTIA Venture Advisory Board (an organization focused on mentoring and supporting women entrepreneurs), member of the Board of Directors of Rising Tide Africa (an organization focused on aggregating and harnessing the power, networks and capital of women angel investors), was a winner of the Moss-Adams/ASTIA Women Entrepreneur Mentor of the Year award, and is a Kauffman Fellowship and Pipeline Angel Fellowship Mentor.

EchoVC Pan-Africa Fund's disclosed investments include HotelsNG, the leading hotel booking platform in Nigeria, NextCounsel, the leading CRM suite for African law firms, Lifebank, a last mile supply chain platform for blood and other essential medical supplies, Cellulant, a cross-border payments platform, Payjoy, a device management and finance platform for emerging markets, Octamile, a provider of digital insurance, and Kukua, an animation-driven edtech platform.

EchoVC Eco Pilot Fund I is EchoVC’s pre-seed vehicle focused on making pre-seed first-institutional-check investments into African startups focused on neoenergy, sustainable mobility, agriculture and food security, and climate risk. EchoVC Eco Seed Fund I is currently in market.

Eghosa attended law school at the University of Nigeria and University of Pennsylvania and business school at Babson College.

BIOGRAPHY FOR TOMMASO PORZIO
Tommaso Porzio is the Daniel W. Stanton Associate Professor in the Economics Division at Columbia Business School. He is a macro-development economist, and his research focuses on understanding the fundamental causes of cross-country income differences and designing policies to address them. Much of his work examines how the organization of production differs across countries, with particular emphasis on the key role of human capital in driving firm-level and aggregate productivity. His research has been featured in leading academic journals, including the American Economic Review, Econometrica, and the Journal of Political Economy.

Tommaso is also a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and an affiliate of BREAD, CEPR, and Y-RISE. Before joining Columbia, he served as an assistant professor at the University of California, San Diego.

He earned his Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University and holds Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in Economics, Social Sciences, and Management from Bocconi University.

BIOGRAPHY FOR FADILAH TCHOUMBA
Fadilah Tchoumba is the CEO of ABAN and the fund manager for Catalytic Africa, a co-investment facility for early-stage startups in Africa. She also serves as the Director of the African Business Angel Vehicle, which focuses on sector-specific ventures. Additionally, Fadilah is a founding member and senior analyst at Amzill, a data collection and analysis firm. She sits on the advisory board of ENRICH in Africa and the $1billion Timbuktoo Initiative.

Before joining ABAN, Fadilah managed investment portfolios for institutional investors with interests in African trade. She also served as Director of Business and Innovation for the Royal Commonwealth Society, where she led the development of innovative projects aligned with Commonwealth values.

Fadilah has been instrumental in creating tech-driven funds for innovative startups, including sharia-compliant vehicles, establishing herself as a leader in alternative asset classes in Africa. Passionate about innovation and sustainability, she advocates for early-stage investing, cross-border investments, and policy development to drive success in Africa’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.

This session will focus on the Southern Africa – Towards Inclusive Economic Development (SA-TIED) programme and its pioneering work in facilitating data-driven economic research and policy design. Central to this effort is the National Treasury Secure Data Facility (NT-SDF), a secure platform enabling researchers to access anonymised tax data to investigate critical development challenges.

Attendees will gain insights into the SA-TIED programme, how the NT-SDF operates, the types of research it supports, and its transformative role in advancing evidence-based policymaking. The session also highlights the programme’s unique collaboration between government, academia, and international institutions, showcasing its potential to empower economists in addressing regional inequalities.

BIOGRAPHY FOR RANIL DISSANAYAKE
Ranil Dissanayake is the Deputy Chief Economist focusing on development issues at the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. Previously he was senior research fellow at the Center for Global Development.

He holds a DPhil in Public Policy from the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford. He has more than 20 years’ experience in international development policy making and research, having been a senior adviser to the Governments of Malawi and Tanzania and a Senior Economic Adviser to successive Chief Economists in the UK’s Department for International Development between 2016 and 2020.

His research interests are in organisational theory and public sector decision-making, poverty measurement and policy, economic development in lower-income countries and bridging the gap between research and policymaking.

BIOGRAPHY FOR MIRIAM LAKER
Dr. Miriam is a Medical Doctor and research scientist with over two decades of experience working in academia, international health, and development.

She is currently a Senior Research Advisor at GiveDirectly, where she focuses on the design of key evaluations and new programs, assisting with fundraising opportunities, and guiding our country leadership on research and program design. She also supports external engagement with researchers, high-priority donors, and audiences offering expert insights, and ensuring evidence continues to drive our impact.

A recognized advocate for cash transfers, she has been featured in interviews with the New York Times, NPR, The Economist, Vox and more. Previously, she was a Principal Investigator with the US-East Africa HIV/AIDS Malignancy Research Consortium. She is a part-time faculty member of Clinical Epidemiology at UCSF and taught Implementation Sciences at Makerere University. A Fellow of the International Women’s Forum Executive Leadership Program, she was named one of Uganda’s Top 40 Women Under 40 in 2016.

BIOGRAPHY FOR JUSTICE TEI MENSAH
Justice Tei Mensah is a Senior Economist in the Office of the Chief Economist, Africa Region at the World Bank. Prior to joining the World Bank, he was an Economist at the International Finance Corporation (IFC). His research, policy, and operational work cover a range of policy-relevant questions related to Digitization, Firms, Infrastructure. His work also focuses on issues related to public policy in Africa.

He leads the World Bank’s Think Africa Partnership (TAP) multi-donor trust fund. TAP is the Africa Regions’ flagship trust fund focused on supporting economic transformation and growth in the region through uptake of policy-relevant knowledge and data. He also manages the World Bank’s Chief Economist of Government (CEoG) network— a peer network of chief economic advisors to heads of states and prime ministers in over 40 African countries.

Justice holds a Ph.D in Economics from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, an MPhil in Economics from the University of Ghana, and a BA in Economics from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana.

BIOGRAPHY FOR NOMPUMELELO NYATHI-MOHOHLWANE
Dr Nompumelelo Nyathi-Mohohlwane is an education researcher working at the National Department of Basic Education in South Africa. Nompumelelo's work includes system monitoring and conducting research and evaluation of education interventions. She is part of the research team for the government-led Early Grade Reading Study randomised control trials (2015-2018, 2018-2021, 2021-2024). She has also led the development of early grade reading benchmarks for 11 South African languages. She has a Doctorate in Education Policy from Stellenbosch University. She is a non-resident fellow with the Centre for Global Development and a research fellow with the University of Stellenbosch. She is part of the Academic Lead Team for the What Works Hub in Education.

You can find one of her latest publications here: Mohohlwane, N., Taylor, S., Cilliers, J., & Fleisch, B. (2023). Reading Skills Transfer Best from Home Language to a Second Language: Policy Lessons from Two Field Experiments in South Africa. Centre for Global Development Working Paper.