Toward a Renaissance and a Higher-Order Accountability in Local Economic Development in Africa
Presenter: Julius A. Nukpezah, Assistant Professor, Mississippi State University, USA
Time: November 10, 2021, 3:00 pm-4:00 pm, GMT
Abstract
While electoral and fiscal decentralization may contribute to political accountability and enhance local economic development, these are at best lower-order accountability mechanisms. The webinar will assert that higher-order accountability should include a decentralized entrepreneurial leadership that emphasizes entrepreneurship, professionalism, local autonomy, and inter-local competition that are necessary for local economic development in Africa, making it a model for a global renaissance. The webinar advances the scholarship on political accountability and local economic development in Africa with practical and progressive solutions to economic development challenges on the continent.
Bio
Dr. Nukpezah is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Administration and a Dean’s Eminent Scholar in the Social and Behavioral Sciences for the College of Arts and Sciences at Mississippi State University. His research focuses on state and local government management and finance, and he also examines the intersection between poverty alleviation policies and rural economic development.
Previously, he was a senior policy advisor at the Ghana Ministry of Food and Agriculture and coordinator of a youth program in agriculture, where he collaborated with several international agencies, including affiliates of the countries of Japan, Germany, China, India, the United States, the Netherlands, and multiple African countries for rural economic development. Currently, he is a PI or co-PI of more than $1.6 million U.S. government grant research projects in Africa. He was named “the Outstanding Graduate Professor” in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration in 2018.