Rate My Professor Imraan Valodia

Professor Imraan Valodia is Professor of Economics, Pro Vice-Chancellor: Climate, Sustainability and Inequality, and Director of the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand. He holds a BCom, BComHons, MSc in International Trade and Finance, and DEcon. His research interests include inequality, climate justice, competition policy, industrial development, and employment in developing countries. Professor Valodia played a leading role in establishing the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies, a multi-disciplinary initiative to promote research and policy change for greater equality. He has led large national and international studies, including an international study of the informal economy across 10 cities, a three-year project on the gender impacts of taxation in eight countries, and work through the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies on employment, inequality, wealth inequality in the global South, care, climate change, and green industrialisation in Africa. He has published extensively in leading academic journals and the popular press and co-edited the Oxford Handbook of the South African Economy.

Professor Valodia is a part-time member of the Competition Tribunal in South Africa and Chair of the National Minimum Wage Commission. He is a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa Standing Committee on Science for the Reduction of Poverty and Inequality. In 2016, he was appointed by the President to chair the Advisory Panel on the National Minimum Wage, which led to its introduction in South Africa. He has served on panels advising on amendments to the Competition Act, value-added taxes and zero-rating, and the funding of higher education. He is a member of the Presidential Economic Advisory Council. Professor Valodia has worked with the International Labour Organisation, the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, UN Women, and other international institutions. He serves on the boards of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing, the Global Development Institute at the University of Manchester, and the UNAIDS Global Council on Inequality, AIDS and Pandemics.