Photo : UNCTAD, CC BY-SA 2.0
Célestin Monga
Economist and former Chief Economist of the African Development Bank
Born in 1960
Who are they?
Born in 1960, Célestin Monga studied in Bordeaux and at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and earned a doctorate at the University of Pau, before further study at MIT and Harvard. Starting out as a banker in Cameroon, he joined the World Bank in 1997, rising to Senior Economic Adviser. He then became a Managing Director at UNIDO, and from July 2016 Vice-President and Chief Economist of the African Development Bank.
What made them famous
He first came to public attention in Cameroon with an open letter to Paul Biya, « Rigged Democracy », published in Le Messager on 27 December 1990. Prosecuted for insulting the head of state, he received a suspended six-month prison sentence and a 300,000 CFA franc fine. As a development economist he went on to co-edit, with Justin Yifu Lin, the two-volume « Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics » (2015), and teaches public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Key facts
- In 2012 Jeune Afrique ranked him among Africa's top five economists.
- He wrote « Nihilisme et négritude » (PUF, 2009), published in English as « Nihilism and Negritude », and « Anthropologie de la colère » (L'Harmattan, 1995).
- He was economics editor of the five-volume « New Encyclopedia of Africa » (2007).