Paschal Assey is a retired Civil Servant, with more than 30 years of diverse experiences including policy analysis, development planning, developing monitoring systems, and managing development projects. He served in different capacities including Deputy Chief Executive Officer – Millennium Challenge Account Tanzania, Director for Poverty Eradication – Vice President’s Office of the Government of Tanzania, National Coordinator of The Poverty Eradication Initiatives Programme, and Principal Economist of the Planning Commission of Tanzania.

He obtained BA Economics from University of Dar es Salaam, MA in Public Administration from Carleton University Canada, and National Accountancy Diploma from the National Board of Accountants and Auditors Tanzania.

François Bourguignon is the director of studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and Emeritus Professor at the Paris School of Economics, where he previously held the position of a director. From 2003 to 2007, he was Chief Economist and Vice President of the World Bank. He was also Chairman of the Institutional Diagnostic Project.

He has vast experience in advising governments and international organisations. In addition, he is the author/editor of numerous books and articles in international economic journals: his work, theoretical and empirical, focuses mainly on the distribution and redistribution of income in developing and developed countries. During his career, he has received several scientific distinctions, such as the Dan David Prize in 2016.

Klaus Deininger (discussant) is Lead Economist in the Sustainability and Infrastructure Team of the Development Research Group at the World Bank.

His areas of research focus on income and asset inequality and its relationship to poverty reduction and growth; access to land, land markets, and land reform and their impact on household welfare and agricultural productivity; and land tenure and its impact on investment, including environmental sustainability. His works also account for capacity building (including the use of quantitative and qualitative methods) for policy analysis and evaluation, mainly in the Africa, Central America, and East Asia Regions.

Antonio Estache (discussant) is Professor of Economics at Université libre de Bruxelles and a researcher at the European Centre for Advanced Research in Economics and Statistics (Belgium). Since 2008, he has also been Policy Advisor for all major multilateral development agencies and various governments and parliaments. Prior to that, he spent 25 years at the World Bank working on the restructuring and regulation of infrastructure services, on public sector reforms (including decentralization, budgetary processes, and tax reform) as well as on the macroeconomic modelling of their economic and social impacts. He has also published extensively on these topics.

Catrina Godinho is Climate Change Specialist at the World Bank, a fellow of the Energy for Growth Hub and Agora Energiewende, and former OIES-Saudi Aramco Fellow at the Oxford Institute of Energy Studies. Her research focuses on the political economy of climate change and energy sector reform and governance. At the time of writing, Catrina was Research Associate at the Power Futures Lab at the University of Cape Town.

Hazel Gray (discussant) is Director of the Centre of African Studies (CAS) at the University of Edinburgh. She previously worked at the Ministry of Finance in Tanzania from 2000 to 2004, and she was a lead author of the UNDP Human Development Report for Tanzania in 2014 and 2017. She is the co-chair of the journal Critical African Studies. Her research interests cover the political economy of development and industrial change in Africa, the political economy of institutions and social provisioning, and heterodox economics. Her monograph ‘Turbulence and Order in Economic Development: Institutions and Economic Development in Tanzania and Vietnam’ was published by Oxford University Press in 2018.

Jan Willem Gunning (discussant) is Emeritus Professor of development economics at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He has also been a staff member of the World Bank and Professor at Oxford, where he was Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies. He has long been active in the African Economic Research Consortium in Nairobi. Gunning was a co-founder and the first president of the European Development Research Network (EUDN). He is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and has served as the Academy’s general secretary. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Auvergne for his role in research on African economies.

François Libois is a research fellow of the Institut national de recherche pour l’agriculture, l’alimentation et l’environnement (INRAE) and Associate Professor at the Paris School of Economics (PSE). He obtained his PhD in 2016 from University of Namur and consecutively worked as post-doctoral fellow for the “Economic Development and Institutions” program under the guidance of François Bourguignon.

By training, François Libois is an applied microeconomist mostly working on topics at the intersection of development, environmental and institutional economics. In general, he is particularly interested by the role of intermediary institutions in the process of development and, in particular, when it deals with natural resource management. He has several pieces of work on biodiversity conservation, fisheries, forests, and access to energy.

Dr. Servacius Likwelile (late) doubled as Senior Lecturer in the Department of Economics at the University of Dar es Salaam Tanzania and Advisor at the Research on Development Policy Institution (REPOA). In his career, he served in various positions including Permanent Secretary Treasury and Paymaster General – Ministry of Finance and Planning Tanzania, Alternate Governor – African Development Bank Group and World Bank; Executive Director of Tanzania Social Action Fund (TASAF), Director for Poverty Eradication in the Vice President’s Office of the Government of Tanzania, and Head of the Economics Department – University of Dar es Salaam. He obtained BA, MA, and PhD (Economics) from University of Dar es Salaam.

Sist J. Mramba is Lecturer at the Law School of Tanzania, an advocate, and an expert of experienced environment, land, natural resources, and common lands and forestry.

He is specialised in the economic issues related to forests, common property resources, and rural land use in Tanzania, as well as transfer of public land to private use. He is the author of several articles and books – including Land Law Manual for Learners and Practitioners. In addition, he has authored several official reports on institutional arrangements and land policies, especially in Tanzania.

Rwekaza S. Mukandala is Professor at the University of Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), where he served the role of Vice Chancellor from 2006 to 2017. Furthermore, he is Chair of the Research and Education for Democracy in Tanzania (REDET) and the Tanzania Election Monitoring Committee (TEMCO). He has also been President of the African Association of Political Science (AAPS) and Chair of the Organising Committee for the XIX World Congress of the International Political Science Association (IPSA) in Durban (South Africa) in 2003.

Rwekaza S. Mukandala has published 15 books and more than 60 articles in international and local journals. He has carried out research on politics, aid and donors, and governance in many African countries. He has also consulted widely on these and other related issues for the Government of Tanzania, International Organisations, and donors.

Jean-Philippe Platteau is Co-Director of the Institutional Diagnostic Project. He is Emeritus Professor at the University of Namur (Belgium) and an active member of the Center for Research in Development Economics (CRED). He is the author of numerous journal articles and several books. Most of his work has been devoted to the study of the role of institutions in economic development and the processes of institutional change. He has always paid particular attention to informal institutions such as social norms, informal markets, and the rules of village societies, leading him to take an interest in the influence of non-economic factors and in problems located at the frontier of economics and other social sciences. His latest work focuses more specifically on the role of culture and religion.

Samuel Mwita Wangwe obtained a PhD at the University of Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) and has over 40-year experience as an economist, policy researcher, and analyst, as well as an economic advisor to the Government of Tanzania. He has authored/co-authored/edited 15 books on development and economic management and over 80 published articles in journals and edited books.

Currently, Samuel M. Wangwe is Consultant and Chairman at Daima Associates, a private consulting firm based in Dar es Salaam, and is Principal Research Associate within the Economic and Social Research Foundation (ESRF) and the Research on Development Policy Institution (REPOA).