Category: Former President

Jacob Mumbi MWANZA holds a Ph.D in Economics from Cornell University, USA. He has written extensively on the teaching of economics and development economics. He was Vice Chancellor of the University of Zambia where he had also served as Head of the Economics Department. With over 30 years of business management experience in both the public and private sectors, Dr Nwanza was Managing Director of both Zambia National Energy Corporation and the Industrial Development Corporation Limited (INDECO).

He has also held several distinguished positions such as Advisor to UN Secretary-General on Economic Development Issues, Advisor to the Secretary General of Commonwealth (1981), Senior Permanent Secretary at the Zambia Ministry of Finance (1987-1991) and IMF Advisor on Economic Issues. He served as a political advisor for Sierra Leone government and subsequently for Zambia government (1991-1995), after which he was appointed Governor of the Bank of Zambia, from where he retired in 2002, after eight years of meritorious service.

Dr Nwanza served as the Chairman of the Board of Zambeef Products Plc. and has been its Director since January 2003. He is also on the Board of Directors of several companies, including Stanbic Bank, Intercontinental Hotel, Lusaka Stock Exchange Limited and United Nations University’s Institute for Natural Resources in Africa. Dr. Mwanza is currently Chancellor of the University of Zambia, and Chairman of the Board of Directors of various companies, including Citibank, Zambia.

Justinian F. Rweyemamu was Tanzania’s first major Economics scholar. he was also a pan-Africanist, political strategist, and international civil servant, considered by many as an outstanding representative of the post-independence African scholars. Rweyemamu graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics, Applied Mathematics and Philosophy from Fordham University, USA, in 1965. Under a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation, he proceeded to Harvard University from where he got his PhD in Economics in 1971.

His thesis titled “An Industrial Strategy for Tanzania” was a seminal work in the development economics scene, and its revised version was later published in 1973 by the Oxford University Press as a book titled “Underdevelopment and Industrialization in Tanzania: A Study of Perverse Capitalist Industrial Development”.

He returned to Tanzania, took up a position at the Department of Economics of the University of Dar es Salaam, and later became the Dean of its Faculty of Social Sciences. In 1975, he appointed as Permanent Secretary of the Planning Ministry and subsequently Personal Assistant (Economic Affairs) to the then President of the Republic, Julius Nyerere. He became internationally recognized due to his thought provoking economic analysis and recommendations on the economic plight of the poor nations. He was then appointed Chairman of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research In Africa (CODESRIA), member of the Committee of the Third World Forum and a founding member of the International Foundation for Development Alternatives (IFDA). In 1977, he was appointed into the UN Committee for Development Planning. He also , worked for the Brandt Commission and the UN Director General for Development and International Cooperation until his untimely death caused by cancer on March 30, 1982.

His major publications include:

•  Underdevelopment and Industrialization in Tanzania: A Study of Perverse Capitalist Development (Nairobi: Oxford University Press, 1973);
• Towards Socialist Planning; The Teaching of Economics in Africa; Industrialization and Income Distribution in Africa;
•  Pugwash on Self-reliance; North-South: A Programme for Survival (The Brandt report);
• Dialogue for a New Order; Third World Options: Power, Security and Hope for another Development (Tanzania Publishing House, 1992).

Kankam Twum-Barima was born in the Gold Coast (Ghana) on 18th December 1918. He obtained a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Agriculture from the University of Cambridge in 1946, and also obtained his post-graduate Diploma in Agriculture in 1947. On his return to the Gold Coast, he was appointed as Agricultural Officer in the Colonial Agricultural Service. In 1951, he became a Lecturer in Agricultural Economics at the University College of the Gold Coast, now University of Ghana, Legon. He later left Legon to head the School of Agriculture in the former Kumasi College of Technology in Kumasi, now the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), rising later to become a Professor of Agriculture, Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture, Pro-Vice Chancellor and Acting Vice-Chancellor. He left the University in December of 1967 and took up farming in his home town, Kyebi. Kankam Twum-Barima was Ghana’s representative on the Executive Board of UNESCO in Paris (1970 -76) and Vice President of the Executive Board (1974-1976). In 1972 he was appointed Director of the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER) at Legon. He retired from the University in 1983.
Kankam Twum-Barima was the second President of CODESRIA’s Executive Committee between 1976 and 1979.

He served on various committees and boards at home and abroad, during his lifetime. In 1959, he was elected a foundation Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Learning, which was later re-named the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences. From 1966 to 1969, he was a member of the Board of Governors of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences and Chairman of its Research Committee. In 1963, he was a member of an International Mission to advice on the development of a national plan of education of Malawi, and he was responsible for the technical and agricultural aspects of the national plan as drawn up by the team which was sponsored by the British Overseas Ministry and USAID.

He was a Consultant to UNESCO in Agricultural Science and Education in 1965; and in 1967, to FAO (Rome), on Rural Sociological Problems of Agricultural Development. Some of his published books and articles include Development of Agricultural Education, Education for Development and The Relevance of Academic Programmes and Research to Development.

Professor Twum-Barima died in 1998.

Jacques Kazadi Nduba Wa Dile was born on the 23rd December 1936 in Mikalayi (Luluabourg Saint Joseph) in the current Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). After his secondary school education at Saint Joseph’s College and Bulongo University Lovanium, he obtained a Ph.D. in applied economics at the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium). As an academic and researcher, Professor Kazadi Ndubi Wadile has taught at several universities in DR Congo, before being appointed as Dean of the Faculty of Economics.

Professor Kazadi Ndubi Wadile has been a member of several scientific associations such as the International African Institute (United Kingdom), the Association of French-speaking economists (AELFE) or the Pan-African Institute for Development (Douala – Geneva). He has also served as Vice President in 1984 and Chairman, May 1986 – May 1990, on the Board of Directors of the IPD. He was President of CODESRIA’s Executive Committee from 1973 to 1976 and was a member of the Executive Committee until 1979.

He has published many books and his most recent publications are: « Problématique de l’application du SMIG » (2004) ; « Politique salariale dans la fonction publique » (2007) and « L’entreprise privée nationale et la gestion moderne » (2008).