Robert Liebenthal is a development economist and manager with more than 40 years of management and field experience covering Africa, Europe and Central Asia, as well as global and institutional policy issues.
From 1975 to 2002, he worked at the World Bank, where he held various professional and management positions. Since retiring from the Bank and moving back to Zambia, he has worked as a consultant for the UN Economic Commission for Africa, the African Development Bank, GIZ (the German technical assistance agency), the Zambian Government, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. He has served on the board of African Life Financial Services Ltd and Zambia Analysis, a magazine on economics and business in Zambia. He was co-editor of the book, Attacking Poverty in Africa, a collection of case studies for the Beijing Conference on Poverty in 2006. From 2009 to 2011, he was National Coordinator for the Millennium Challenge Account – Zambia, a unit under the Ministry of Finance responsible for preparing Zambia’s proposed investment program for support by the Millennium Challenge Corporation. From January 2011 to May 2015, he was Vice-President of the Economics Association of Zambia. He recently retired from the position of Senior Country Advisor (part-time) for Zambia for the International Growth Centre, a research network based at the London School of Economics and Oxford University. He is a Senior Associate of the African Centre for Economic Transformation, based in Accra Ghana.
