Professor Issouf Soumaré is Full Professor of Finance and the Director of International Relations of the Faculty of Business Administration at Université Laval, Canada, where he is also the Director of the Laboratory for Financial Engineering. He is involved as a resource person for the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC), and holds a PhD in Business Administration in Finance from the University of British Columbia, Canada. He is also a certified Professional Risk Manager, Financial Risk Manager, and Chartered Director.

Dr Gaston Gohou is the CEO of Development Solutions Institute, based in Canada, which provides advisory services and applied research on economic development strategies to emerging and developing countries. He is a senior economist and statistician, with more than 30 years of professional experience, and has worked in more than 53 countries, mostly in Africa and Asia. He has previously worked for the World Bank and the African Development Bank. He received a PhD in Economics and a Master’s in International Economics and Econometrics from the University of Maryland at College Park, USA. He also holds a Master’s in Applied Mathematics.

Dr Hugues Kouadio is the Director of ENSEA, an institute of statistics and applied economics in the Ivory Coast. He received a PhD in Economics and a Master’s in Macroeconomic Modelling and Conjuncture from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, France. He is the current President of the African Group of Statistical Training and a member of the steering committee of the Global Strategy in Agricultural Statistics for Africa.

Dr Janvier D. Nkurunziza is the Chief of Research and Analysis in the Special Unit on Commodities of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), where he directs research on the interaction between primary commodities production and trade and economic development. For several years, he has been a resource person in the African Economic Research Consortium, a research and capacity building network. He has published dozens of articles and chapters in edited books and co-authored flagship reports, including UNCTAD’s Commodities and Development Report and the Economic Development in Africa Report. He holds a doctorate in Economics from the University of Oxford, where he is affiliated with the Center for the Study of African Economies.