Visiting experts
The CEoG Initiative is privileged to include number of former presidential advisors and other economics experts in its network. Their experience ranges from government to academia to international policy institutes. Together, they comprise a significant body of expertise and experience of high-level policy advice. These experts are available to visit advisors' countries on short missions to provide support to the chief economic advisor and team.
The experts' brief biographies are below. Any advisors interested in inviting one of the experts are encouraged to reach out to Program Manager Justice Mensah at jmensah2@worldbank.org. If you would be interested to join our roster of experts, please also send us an email.
Trudi Makhaya
Trudi Makhaya is the former economic advisor to South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa. She was in this role from 2018 to 2023. From 2003 to 2010 she worked at Deloitte, Genesis Analytics and AngloGold Ashanti in South Africa. Between 2010 to 2014, Trudi was an economist and a member of the executive committee at the Competition Commission of South Africa. In 2015, she founded an advisory firm focused on competition policy and entrepreneurship. She holds an MBA and an MSc in Development Economics from Oxford University.
Tan Sri Nor Mohamed
Tan Sri Nor Mohamed Yakcop served as Special Economic Adviser to the Government of Malaysia from May 2000 to 2003. He became Malaysia’s Minister of Finance in 2004 and was subsequently appointed Minister of Economic Planning from 2009 to 2013. Tan Sri Nor served as Deputy Chairman of the Khazanah Nasional Berhad, the Government of Malaysia’s strategic investment arm. He was also Chairman of the Khazanah Research Institute, which aims to provide critical and objective policy input for Malaysia’s growth and development.
One of Tan Sri Nor’s most significant achievements was assisting the Prime Minister in the implementation of selective exchange control measures to overcome the 1997 / 1998 Asian Financial Crisis. The bold and decisive government action ensured that Malaysia not only survived without assistance from the IMF or World Bank, but also emerged stronger after the crisis.
Tan Sri Nor Mohamed was with the Central Bank of Malaysia from 1968 to 1994 and again from September 1998 to April 2000. Whilst in the Central Bank, he played a key role in the development of Islamic finance in Malaysia, including the Islamic pawn broking system (al-Rahnu). He was also responsible for setting up the Securities Commission and Malaysia’s first rating agency (RAM).
Cadman Mills
Cadman Mills was Senior Presidential Economic Advisor for the Government of Ghana from 2009 to 2016. He has more than four decades of experience consulting, advising, formulating and supervising the implementation of policies for sub-Saharan African countries. He was previously a member of the Board of Directors of the Ghana National Petroleum Company and Chairman of the Sino-Ghana Presidential Task Force which negotiated the $US 3 billion Chinese Infrastructure loan for Ghana. Dr. Atta Mills worked for the World Bank for over 20 years and was the advisor to the Africa Regional Vice President from 2005 -2006.
Dr. Atta Mills has considerable teaching experience, for example as Senior Training Officer at the World Bank’s Economic Development Institute (1986 – 1991), and as lecturer at the UN African Institute for Development and Planning (IDEP). His publications cover structural adjustment, social indicators, and industrialization in Africa.
Paul Collier
Prof Sir Paul Collier is Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford and a Professorial Fellow of St Antony’s College. From 1998–2003 he took a five-year Public Service leave during which he was Director of the Research Development Department of the World Bank. He is currently a Professeur invité at Sciences Po and a Director of the International Growth Centre.
Prof. Collier’s research focuses on various strands of economic development, including private investment in African infrastructure, productive cities in rapidly urbanising low-income countries, the effects of aid and the problems of democracy in low-income and natural resource rich societies.
His recent books include The Bottom Billion (Oxford University Press, 2007) which in 2008 won the Lionel Gelber, Arthur Ross and Corine prizes and in May 2009 was the joint winner of the Estoril Global Issues Distinguished Book prize; Wars, Guns and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places (Vintage Books, 2009); and The Plundered Planet: How to reconcile prosperity with nature (Oxford University Press, 2010); Exodus: How migration is changing our world (Oxford University Press, 2013). His latest book is The Future of Capitalism: Facing New Anxieties (2018). In 2014, Paul Collier received a knighthood for services to promoting research and policy change in Africa.
Stefan Dercon
Prof. Stefan Dercon is the Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies and Professor of Economic Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government and the Economics Department at the University of Oxford. He is also co-Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on African Governance and has been appointed Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) for services to Economics and international development.
Between 2011 and 2017, Stefan Dercon served for six years as Chief Economist at the Department for International Development (DFID), the UK government department in charge international development efforts. His research interests concern what keeps some people and countries poor: the failures of markets, governments and politics, mainly in Africa, and how to change this. Current work focuses on the psychological challenges of poverty, the political economy of development, the challenges of industrialisation in Africa, and how to prepare for and finance responses to natural disasters and protracted humanitarian crises.
Albert Zeufack
Dr. Albert G. Zeufack, a Cameroonian national, is the World Bank’s Chief Economist for Africa. Prior to his appointment in May 2016, he was Practice Manager in the Macroeconomics and Fiscal Management Global Practice and leader of the World Bank-wide Community of Practice for the Management of Natural Resources Rents. He is also a member of the Technical Advisory Committee of the Natural Resource Charter at the University of Oxford, a member of the Advisory Board of the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), a member of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Network, and a member of the Board of the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC).
Dr. Zeufack received his Ph.D. in economics from CERDI, the University of Clermont-Ferrand where he taught before joining the World Bank. His main research interest is in the micro-foundations of macroeconomics.