"The political economy of Nigeria: challenges and opportunities for reform" with Prof Kingsley Moghalu

Past Event

Date
 24 November 2021, 5:00pm - 6:00pm

Location
 Oxford Martin School & Online
34 Broad Street (corner of Holywell and Catte Streets), Oxford, OX1 3BD

Event Recording:

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and the continent’s largest economy, is populated by dynamic and talented citizens, but has faced steep challenges in development, leadership and governance.

Poverty is widespread. The country is currently embattled by terrorism, general insecurity, a depressed economy, and by challenges from separatist agitations to the existential legitimacy of the Nigerian state.

How can Nigeria achieve transformation economically and politically? Taking a political economy approach into the Nigerian conundrum, this public lecture by Professor Kingsley Moghalu, Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Oxford Martin School, examines how the West African country’s foundation as a British colony, and contemporary challenges of nationhood and political order formation, the resource curse of oil, corruption, and the absence of a strong leadership culture have created incentives for Nigeria’s current dysfunction. He identifies not just seven critical challenges, but also offers seven paths to reform and a longer term resolution of the country’s political and economic challenges. The result, if his prescriptions happen, could be the long-delayed emergence of Africa’s first truly indigenous global power.

Moghalu Kingsley jpeg

Professor Kingsley Moghalu
Oxford Martin Visiting Fellow

Professor Kingsley Moghalu is the Oxford Martin Visiting Fellow on the Oxford Martin Programme on African Governance, University of Oxford, for the Michaelmas Term in 2021. He served as Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria from 2009 to 2014, leading the execution of extensive reforms in the Nigerian banking sector and the payments system, and was subsequently appointed Professor of Practice in International Business and Public Policy at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow in the Council on Emerging Markets Enterprises at The Fletcher School, and the CEO of Sogato Strategies LLC, a global investment advisory firm.

Professor Moghalu previously worked in the United Nations system for 17 years in political, legal and external affairs roles at the UN Secretariat Headquarters in New York and in duty stations in Cambodia, Croatia, Rwanda, and Switzerland, rising to the rank of Director. He was a presidential candidate in Nigeria’s general elections in 2019. He is the author of a number of books including Emerging Africa: How the Global Economy’s Last Frontier Can Prosper and Matter (Penguin, 2014). Professor Moghalu obtained his Doctor of Philosophy degree in International Relations at the London School of Economics, the M.A. at The Fletcher School at Tufts University, and the LL.B. degree from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.