Biography

Professor Banji Oyelaran-Oyeyinka, a global thought leader is currently the Senior Special Adviser on Industrialization to the President of the African Development Bank (AfDB) where he is coordinating the Bank’s industrial policy, the Agro-Industrial Processing Zones and the pharmaceutical sector. He is a member of the Advisory Council on Industrialization of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA)
and a winner of the National Productivity Order of Merit.
He served at the United Nations (UN) system for 20 years, his last positions been Director, Regional Office for Africa, Chief Scientific Advisor, UN-HABITAT, and Director Monitoring & Research Division. He
was Senior Economic Adviser, UN Centre on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Geneva where he coordinated the ten-year review of performance of Least Developed Countries (LDCs).
He spent six years (2001-2006) as Professor at the United Nations University – Institute for New technologies (UNU-INTECH) where he earned global acclaim for his pioneering work in the field of Industrialization, Technological Change and Innovation Policy. He is the first Nigerian professor in the field of Development Economics and Industrial Policy and a Visiting professor at the United Nations
University – MERIT, Netherlands and the Open University, UK.
His twenty plus books and co-authored ones include: “Industrialization and Economic Diversification: Post Crisis Development Agenda in Asia and Africa”, 2022 UK: Routledge Publishers); “Resurgent Africa: Structural Transformation in Sustainable Development”, 2020, (Anthem Press); “From Consumption to
Production: the Why and Ways out of Failed Industrialization in Nigeria”, and “Rich Country Poor People: The Story of Nigeria’s Poverty amid Plenty” (2014), among others.
Professor Oyelaran-Oyeyinka holds a Bachelor of Science (first class honours) in Chemical Engineerin from the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), Master’s in Chemical engineering, University of Toronto, Canada, and Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) in Development Economics specializing
in the Political Economy of Technological Change and Industrialization, University of Sussex, United Kingdom. He is a Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Engineering and Fellow, Nigerian Academy of Chemical Engineering.