Discussants

Dr Keith A Bezanson
Director
Institute of Development Studies

IDS Director, Dr Keith Bezanson, has devoted his entire career to international development. During the mid-60s, Dr Bezanson served as a CUSO volunteer in Nigeria where he worked as a secondary school teacher. He subsequently lectured and directed a national research programme in Ghana. He then joined the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and was Director of the East African Programme. In 1978, he was named Director General in charge of all areas relating to Canada's participation in the multilateral development banks. From 1981 to 1985, he held the post of Vice-President of the Americas Branch.

In 1985, Dr Bezanson became Canada's Ambassador to Peru and Bolivia; following this, in 1988, he was Manager of the Administrative Department at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington. From 1991-1997, he was President of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in Canada. In March of 1997 he assumed the Directorship of the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, Brighton, UK.

Dr. Alan Gelb
Chief Economist and Sector Director of Africa Region
The World Bank

Dr. Alan Gelb, is the Chief Economist and Sector Director of the Africa Region. He joined the World Bank in 1987 and he was the Staff Director of the 1996 World Development Report on The Transition from the Plan to Market. He was also the Division Chief of the Transition and Macro-Adjustment Division. He recently headed a team that produced the collaborate study: "Can Africa Claim the 21st Century"?

He has published several books and papers in research journals in the areas of economics, business and industrial relations, politics and sociology.

Dr. Marco Ferroni
Principal
Office of Evaluation and Oversight
InterAmerican Development Bank

Throughout his career in international development, Dr. Marco Ferroni has held official posts in multilateral and bilateral agencies. He has recently joined the Office of Evaluation and Oversight of the Inter-American Development Bank. He has previously held the position of Senior Advisor in the Vice Presidency for Resource Mobilization and Cofinancing at the World Bank. He has been a member of the Boards of Executive Directors of the Inter-American Development Bank and the Inter-American Investment Corporation. And he has occupied managerial positions in the Ministries of Public Economy and Foreign Affairs in Switzerland, working in the area of technical and financial cooperation with developing countries and emerging market economies. Mr. Ferroni holds a Ph.D. in agricultural economics from Cornell University. He held a graduate teaching appointment at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich in the 1990s. He has published articles and edited professional papers on foreign aid and development finance, international public goods, public expenditure reform, policy reform and social protection, and the interrelationship between trade and macroeconomic regimes and agricultural growth.

Adrian Hodges
Director, The Americas
Prince of Wales Business Leaders Forum

Throughout his career in international development, Dr. Marco Ferroni has held official posts in multilateral and bilateral agencies. He has recently joined the Office of Evaluation and Oversight of the Inter-American Development Bank. He has previously held the position of Senior Advisor in the Vice Presidency for Resource Mobilization and Cofinancing at the World Bank. He has been a member of the Boards of Executive Directors of the Inter-American Development Bank and the Inter-American Investment Corporation. And he has occupied managerial positions in the Ministries of Public Economy and Foreign Affairs in Switzerland, working in the area of technical and financial cooperation with developing countries and emerging market economies. Mr. Ferroni holds a Ph.D. in agricultural economics from Cornell University. He held a graduate teaching appointment at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich in the 1990s. He has published articles and edited professional papers on foreign aid and development finance, international public goods, public expenditure reform, policy reform and social protection, and the interrelationship between trade and macroeconomic regimes and agricultural growth.

Bruno Laporte
Coordinator
Knowledge Sharing Program
The World Bank

Bruno Laporte, is currently the Coordinator of the Knowledge Sharing Program at the World Bank. He joined the World Bank in March, 1985 and has worked extensively on education, training and employment issues in different countries. Prior to joining the Bank, he worked as an advisor in the Ministry of Finance and Planning in Ivory Coast. He also worked in the private sector, as a Loan Officer for Manufacturers Hanover Trust in Paris. He holds degrees in business administration from France and in education administration and planning from Harvard School of Education in the US.

Uma Lele

Uma Lele is Senior Advisor in the Operations Evaluation Department of the World Bank. She was the first woman to obtain a Ph. D. in Agricultural Economics from Cornell University. She was also the first woman from a developing country to be elected Fellow of the American Agricultural Economic Association. Over a period of 30 years, she has held various research, operational and advisory positions in the World Bank with extensive experience in South and Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. She has authered or coauthered and edited several books and over 100 papers on a variety of issues including rural development, aid effectiveness, agricultural research and science and technology. Uma Lele was visiting professor at Cornell University and Graduate Research Professor and founding Director of International Studies and Programs at the University of Florida. She established President Carter's Global Development Initiative at the Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia and served as its first director. She has advised a number of private foundations, UN agencies, bilateral donors. She was on the first board of the Center for International Forestry Reseach (CGIAR) when it was established and later was member of the CGIAR's technical advisory committee. Most recently she led OED's review of the World Bank's controversial forest policy and is currently leading OED's evaluation of the Bank's global programs and policies.

Prof. Benno Ndulu
Sector Lead Specialist
The World Bank-Country Office Tanzania

Benno Ndulu currently serves as Sector Lead Specialist with the Macroeconomic Unit for Eastern Africa of the World Bank. He is best known for his involvement in setting up and developing one of the most effective research and training network in Africa, the African Economic Research Consortium. He served first as its Research Director and later as its Executive Director. He received an honorary doctorate from the ISS in the Hague in recognition of his contributions to Capacity Building and Research on Africa. Following his PhD degree in economics from Northwestern University in Evanston, he taught economics and published widely on growth, adjustment, governance and trade. He has been involved in policy advisory roles world wide and has served in a wide range of Boards locally and internationally.

William Reuben
NGO and Civil Society Coordinator
The World Bank

William Reuben Joined the World Bank in March 1999. He is currently the NGO and Civil Society Coordinator of the World Bank and in that capacity, he has worked extensively on promoting the engagement of civil society in development debate and operations. Prior to joining the Bank, he led major NGO regional networks in Latin America and the Caribbean. He has written many articles and papers on the role of civil society in development. He has also taught Development Anthropology at the University of Costa Rica. He holds degrees in Social Anthropology from Costa Rica and Development Studies from the Institute of Social Sciences in the Netherlands.

Todd Sandler
Chair of International Relations
and Economics
University of Southern California, Los Angeles

Todd Sandler is the Robert R. and Katheryn A. Dockson Chair of International Relations and Economics at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He has previously held the position of Distinguished Professor of Economics and Political Science at Iowa State University. His writings address public goods and externalities, defense and peace economics, environmental economics, foreign assistance and other topics. He has authored Economic Concepts for the Social Sciences (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2001), Global Challenges: An Approach to Environmental, Political, and Economic Problems (Cambridge University Press 1997), and Collective Action: Theory and Applications (University of Michigan Press 1992). He has co-authored, The Theory of Externalities, Public Goods, and Club Goods, 2nd Edition (Cambridge University Press 1996). He has done work for the UN Development Program, Overseas Development Council, Department of Defense, World Bank, and elsewhere. In 1998-2000, he was a NATO Fellow.

Anwar Shah
Lead Evaluation Officer
OED, The World Bank

Dr. Anwar Shah is Lead Economist and Coordinator, Public Sector Institutional Reform Cluster with the Operations Evaluation Department, World Bank. He has previously served the Ministry of Finance, Government of Canada and Government of Alberta, Canada and held responsibilities for federal-provincial and provincial-local fiscal relations respectively. He has advised the Governments of Brazil, Canada, Indonesia, China, South Africa, Pakistan, Argentina and Mexico on fiscal federalism issues. His current research interests are in the areas of governance, fiscal federalism, fiscal reform and global environment. He has published six books/monographs on these subjects including a recent (1995) Oxford University Press Book on Fiscal Incentives for Investment and Innovation. His articles have appeared in Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Development Economics, Economic Development and Cultural Change, World Development, Oxford Economic Papers, Public Finance, Land Economics, International Journal of Transport Economics, Journal of Economic Surveys, Public Finance Quarterly, Finance and Development, Canadian Economic Journal, Canadian Public Policy, Gestion Y Analysis de Politicas Publicas, Pakistan Development Review, Kentucky Journal of Economics and Business and World Bank Economic Review. He also serves as a referee and on editorial advisory boards for leading economic journals.

Nigel Twose
Manager
Business Partnership & Outreach Group (BPOG)

Nigel Twose is the Manager of the Business Partnership & Outreach Group (BPOG), a service created in April 2000 and representing the three private sector arms of the World Bank Group: the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA). BPOG is the World Bank Group's center of expertise on private sector partnerships and business outreach. Its aim is to promote Smart Business.Smart Development: promoting private sector engagement in developing countries, that will reduce poverty, improve people's lives, and benefit business.

Before taking up this appointment, Mr. Twose was employed as Senior Partnerships Specialist and Advisor to the World Bank's Vice President for Private Sector Development and Infrastructure. Within that role, he had responsibility for formulating the Bank Group's private sector partnership strategy. He initiated and had management responsibility for the Business Partners for Development network, and led the Bank strategy on corporate social responsibility.

Before joining the World Bank in 1997, Mr Twose had a 21 year career with non-governmental organizations, including postings in West Africa and Nepal.

Jan Martin Witte
Research Associate
Global Public Policy Project

Jan Martin Witte is a Research Associate with the Global Public Policy Project and an ERP-Scholar at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, DC.

Jan Martin holds degrees from the Johns Hopkins University, School for Advanced International Studies (M.A. in International Relations and International Economics) and the University of Potsdam (Germany, Diploma in Political Science). Jan Martin received scholarships from the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). For his research with the Global Public Policy Project, he received support from the Fritz Thyssen Foundation. Currently, Jan Martin is supported by a European Recovery Program Scholarship, awarded by the 'Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes'.

His work experience include short-term research assistantships at the Brookings Institution (Washington, D.C.) the Corporate Strategy Group of the World Bank (Washington,D.C.) and Office of Development Studies of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Most recently, Jan Martin worked as a Partnership Policy Officer with the Private Sector Partnership Unit of the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS). As a Partnership Policy Officer, Jan Martin developed a Partnership Services Portfolio for UNOPS, translating its partnership work into a core building block of UNOPS' corporate strategy. To that end he developed the outlines of a 'partnership regime' for the organization that included legal regulations, guidance for project management staff, a marketing study as well as a training program.