I graduated from the program in 2017 and was fortunate to land an Associate in Research position at DCID after graduation, where I worked on debt and development in Sub-Saharan Africa with Director Indermit Gill. Together we developed three working papers and are in the process of getting those published. The Brookings Institution published two blogs about them so far.
After working at DCID about 1.5 years, I have started working as a consultant in the Macroeconomics Trade and Investment Global Practice of the World Bank. In my first month, I worked on economic updates of three central African countries: Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of Congo and Central African Republic. I have done econometric analysis to identify structural breaks and growth spells in these 3 countries and to identify the determinants of structural breaks and growth spells. I am currently working on public finance issues in emerging and advanced economies. We are preparing a working paper for this topic that will likely be ready by the end of the first quarter of 2019. On top of my main tasks at the Bank, I am also helping some analyses on the human capital component of “The Changing Wealth of Nations” report.
I can honestly say that working with Professor Gill enriched my skills more than anything else. I’ve learnt a lot from him and I am still learning from him. One of our blogs at Brookings, “Sounding the Alarm on Africa’s Debt,” which was based on our paper “Is Africa Headed into Another Debt Crisis?”, has brought a lot of attention to the possible public debt problems of Sub-Saharan Africa. I can say that it was one of the first papers/articles which addressed the public debt issue in the subcontinent. It was wonderful to be invited back to Duke to co-present this work with him at the New Building Blocks of Development conference this month.
