Benno Ndulu (23 January 1950 – 22 February 2021) was a Tanzanian Professor and the governor of the

Bank of Tanzania The Bank of Tanzania ( sw, Benki Kuu ya Tanzania) is the central bank of the United Republic of Tanzania. It is responsible for issuing the national currency, the Tanzanian shilling. The bank was established under the Bank of Tanzania Act 196 ...

, the country's central bank, from 2008 to 2018. He died on 22 February 2021 from

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The disease quickly ...

Career

As a professor at the

University of Dar es Salaam The University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) is a public university in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. It was established in 1961 as an affiliate college of the University of London. The university became an affiliate of the University of East Africa (UEA) in ...

in the early 1980s, he led a series of seminars on the economic crisis Tanzania was facing. This work made important contributions to the economic reforms that were implemented in the second half of the 1980s by the second phase government. After this, he worked as a Lead Economist with the Macroeconomic Division of the

World Bank The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Inte ...

for Eastern Africa from the Tanzania Country Office. In that assignment he was directly involved with President

Benjamin Mkapa Benjamin William Mkapa (12 November 193824 July 2020) was the third president of Tanzania, in office from 1995 to 2005. He was Chairman of the Revolutionary State Political Party ( Chama Cha Mapinduzi, CCM). Early life Mkapa was born in Lupaso, ...

's reform program - a program that has contributed to over a decade of sustained economic growth in Tanzania. He is best known for his involvement in setting up and developing one of the most effective research and training networks in Africa, the

African Economic Research Consortium African or Africans may refer to: * Anything from or pertaining to the continent of Africa: ** People who are native to Africa, descendants of natives of Africa, or individuals who trace their ancestry to indigenous inhabitants of Africa *** Ethn ...

. He served first as its research director and later as its executive director. He received an honorary doctorate from the

International Institute of Social Studies The International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam is an independent and international graduate school of policy-oriented critical social science. ISS was established in 1952 by Dutch universities and the Neth ...

(ISS) in The Hague in 1997, recognition of his contributions to Capacity Building and Research on Africa. Following his Ph.D. degree in economics from

Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...

Evanston, Illinois Evanston ( ) is a city, suburb of Chicago. Located in Cook County, Illinois, United States, it is situated on the North Shore along Lake Michigan. Evanston is north of Downtown Chicago, bordered by Chicago to the south, Skokie to the west, ...

, he taught economics and published widely on growth, adjustment, governance and trade. Ndulu was a Visiting Professor at the

Blavatnik School of Government The Blavatnik School of Government is a school of public policy founded in 2010 at the University of Oxford in England. The School was founded following a £75 million donation from a business magnate Leonard Blavatnik, supported by £26 million ...

at the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

from 2018 until his death in 2021. He first became involved at the University of Oxford in late 2017 with the inception of the Pathways for Prosperity Commission on Technology and Inclusive Development, of which he was academic co-director along with Professor

Stefan Dercon Stefan Nicolaas Dercon, , is a Belgian-British economist and a Professor of Economic Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government and the Department of Economics at the University of Oxford. He is also the Director of the Centre for the Study o ...

. In 2020, the Commission concluded its work and developed into the Digital Pathways at Oxford programme, of which Ndulu was a senior advisor.

References

External links

Profile at Institute of Social Studies

Interview with The Business Year
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ndulu, Benno 1950 births 2021 deaths Governors of Bank of Tanzania University of Dar es Salaam faculty Fellows of the Tanzania Academy of Sciences World Bank people Northwestern University alumni Deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic in Tanzania Academics of the University of Oxford