Dr. Olumide Abimbola, a financial expert facilitating trade and financial inclusion
Dr. Olumide Abimbola is a political economist, founder, and director of APRI – Africa Policy Research Institute, a new, independent, non-partisan African policy institute researching key policy issues affecting the African continent.
Dr. Olumide’s areas of focus include climate adaptation, climate finance, trade policy, regional integration, and natural resources management.
He has worked with high-level government officials in several African countries, and conducted research in Tunisia, Côte d’Ivoire, Benin, Togo and Nigeria.
Dr. Olumide has also coordinated work on non-tariff measures in partnership with the International Trade Centre and UNCTAD. Olumide currently sits on the International Board of the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion (IMTFI) at the University of California, Irvine, and is Member, Policy Working Group, at the Institute of Humanities in Africa (HUMA) of the University of Cape Town. As a PhD student, he co-founded NigeriansTalk, a forum for Nigerian opinion and analysis.
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Dr. Olumide completed a bachelor’s degree in Communication and Language Arts from the University of Ibadan, a master’s degree in Developmental Studies from Uppsala University, Sweden, and a doctorate degree in Economic Anthropology from the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland, and has taught graduate-level courses in several German universities.
Before APRI, Dr. Olumide worked at the CONNEX Support Unit, a GIZ-hosted G7 initiative funded by the German government and the European Commission. Before that, he worked on trade and regional integration at the African Development Bank, working on continental projects such as the Africa Visa Openness Index and the Africa Regional Integration Index, a collaboration between the AfDB, African Union and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. He also coordinated work on non-tariff measures in partnership with the International Trade Centre and UNCTAD.
Dr. Olumide has been published on different academic, policy and media platforms. He was recently co-author of a framing paper on climate and racial justice. He also co-authored “Running the Numbers: Use of Financial Models for Extractive Projects in Africa”, a study of how African governments manage natural resources through financial modelling. While at the AfDB, he contributed to the Guidebook on African Commodity and Derivatives Exchange and the Energy Sector Capacity Building Diagnostic & Needs Assessment Study.
Dr. Olumide currently sits on the International Board of the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion (IMTFI) at the University of California, Irvine, and he is a member of the Policy Working Group at the Institute of Humanities in Africa (HUMA) of the University of Cape Town. During his time as a PhD student, Dr. Olumide co-founded NigeriansTalk, a forum for Nigerian opinion and analysis.