Rate My Professor Léonce Ndikumana

Léonce Ndikumana is Distinguished Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst within the Business & Economics faculty and Director of the African Development Policy Program at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI). He chaired the Department of Economics from September 2017 to July 2020 and held the Andrew Glyn Endowed Professorship from 2011 to 2014. Ndikumana obtained his Ph.D. in Economics from Washington University in May 1996, M.A. in Economics in December 1992, and B.A. in Economics with Distinction from the University of Burundi in June 1986. His career trajectory includes progression at UMass Amherst from Assistant Professor (1996-2002) and Associate Professor (2002-2008) to Professor (2011-2019) and Distinguished Professor (2019-present). Internationally, he served as Director of the Department of Development Economics Research at the African Development Bank (2008-2010) and Director of Operational Resources and Policy (January-August 2011), Chief of Macroeconomic Policy Analysis at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (2006-2008), Fulbright Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Cape Town (2003-2004), and holds honorary professorships at the Universities of Stellenbosch (2011-present) and Cape Town (2017-present). He is a member of the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (2015-present) and served on the United Nations Committee on Development Policy (2013-2018).

Ndikumana's academic interests encompass capital flight from sub-Saharan Africa and its magnitudes, causes, and consequences; external debt, foreign aid, and private capital flows; macroeconomic policies including fiscal, monetary, and exchange rate regimes in African countries; financial systems and real economic activity; economics and politics of conflicts and civil wars; post-conflict reconstruction and state building; and natural resources management with domestic resource mobilization. His scholarship has profoundly influenced debates on illicit financial flows, globalization, and tax cooperation. Major honors include the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship (2021), UMass Alumni Association Distinguished Faculty Award (2017), UMass Award for Outstanding Accomplishments in Research and Creative Activity (2013), UMass Spotlight Scholar (2013), and Dudley Seers Memorial Prize for the best article in the Journal of Development Studies Volume 38 (co-authored with James K. Boyce). Key publications feature books such as On the Trail of Capital Flight from Africa: The Takers and the Enablers (2022, with James K. Boyce, Oxford University Press), Africa’s Odious Debts: How Foreign Loans and Capital Flight Bled a Continent (2011, with Boyce, Zed Books), and Capital Flight from Africa: Causes, Effects and Policy Issues (2015, co-editor with S.I. Ajayi, Oxford University Press); and articles including "Is Africa a net creditor? New estimates of capital flight from severely indebted sub-Saharan African countries, 1970-96" (2001, World Development, with Boyce) and "Can National Development Banks Help Alleviate the Shortage of Patient Investment Capital in Africa?" (2023, Journal of African Development, with K. Naidoo and F. Perez).