Prof Alan Hirsch

Alan Hirsch is Emeritus Professor at The Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance at UCT and founding director of the School, 2011 - 2019. He was born in Cape Town and educated at UCT, Wits and Columbia. He taught at UCT, joined the SA Department of Trade and Industry in 1995; from 2002, he managed economic policy in the South African Presidency, and represented the President in the G20, and was co-chair of the G20 Development Working Group. He is a Fellow of the Oxford Martin School, Oxford University, serves on the Board of the European Centre for Development Policy Management and on President Ramaphosa’s Economic Advisory Council. He was visiting scholar at the Harvard Business School, regular visiting professor at Maastricht University, IGC research director in Zambia, OECD Inclusive Growth Advisory Panel-member, on the International Advisory Board of the New Development Bank, and Bradlow Fellow at the SA Institute for International Affairs. His work includes Season of Hope - Economic Reform under Mandela and Mbeki and The Oxford Companion to South African Economics.

This year, Professor Hirsch's publications include an article in the South African Journal of International Affairs called ‘Fatal embrace: How relations between business and government help to explain South Africa’s low-growth equilibrium’, a chapter in the Oxford Handbook of the South African Economy called ‘The politics of South African economic policy 1994 to 2021’, a monograph published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace entitled South Africa: When Strong Institutions and Massive Inequalities Collide and a working paper for the South African Institute of International Affairs titled ‘A strategic consideration of the African Union Free Movement of Persons Protocol and other initiatives towards the freer movement of people in Africa’ which will shortly be published in article form.