Aloysius Uche Ordu

Aloysius Uche Ordu is a nonresident senior fellow with the Africa Growth Initiative in the Global Economy and Development program at Brookings. He previously served as director of the Africa Growth Initiative. Prior to joining Brookings, he was managing partner at Omapu Associates LLC, a boutique advisory services and consulting firm. In that capacity, he was lead adviser of the African Development Fund Policy Innovation Lab, which was created under the Bill & Melinda Gates Trust Fund to support the efforts of the African Development Bank Group for reinvigorating concessional finance to respond to the changing reality of its clients. As lead adviser, he oversaw a policy team that prepared the “Report of the High Level Panel on Transforming Trust in the AfDB Group into Influence.”

Ordu was previously vice president at the African Development Bank. In that capacity he was accountable for the bank’s regional departments, and the policy, fiduciary, partnership, and resource mobilization departments. He oversaw the replenishment of the African Development Fund, led the Bank Group’s decentralization of staff to the country offices across the African continent, chaired the operations committee, played active roles in the senior management coordinating committee, and represented bank management in the committee meetings of the board of executive directors. Before his appointment as vice president, he was regional director for Eastern Africa (covering Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Seychelles, Tanzania, and Uganda). In that capacity, he introduced innovations in country strategy formulation, analytically rigorous economic and sector work, and attention to expeditious portfolio management and quality assurance.

Before joining the African Development Bank, Ordu worked at the World Bank for over two decades and served in various leadership and managerial capacities, including director of operations policy and country services. In that capacity, he represented bank management in the committee meetings of the board of executive directors. He also served as operations director for the Latin America and the Caribbean region; country manager (Manila, Philippines); manager for development effectiveness in the Middle East and North Africa region; and coordinator of the Young Professionals Program—the World Bank Group’s source of talent.

During his long career in international development, Ordu led teams that revamped the World Bank’s lending policy instruments and streamlined its quality assurance processes. He led the design, appraisal and supervision of investment lending projects in Africa, East and South Asia and other world regions in diverse sectors, including urban water and sanitation, agriculture and rural development, energy, and transport infrastructure.

Prior to joining the World Bank Group, he worked as an international economist at the Midland Bank Group, London, covering emerging markets. Before that he worked at The Economist Intelligence Unit, London, covering sovereign risks.

Ordu is a member of the board of directors of the Partnership for Transparency Fund. He served as senior consultant to the World Meteorological Organization, the United Nations Environment Program, the African Development Bank, and the World Bank.

His research interests include trade policy, regional economic integration, governance, public health economics, and  infrastructure financing. He has published numerous commentaries on African affairs through AGI’s Africa in Focus and through the Nairobi-based East African newspaper.

Ordu holds a Ph.D. in economics from Sussex University, M.Sc. in quantitative economics from Bristol University, and B.Sc. in economics and law from University College, Cardiff, Wales, U.K.