Ishac Diwan

Ishac Diwan, speaker, is the Research Director at the Finance for Development Lab at the Paris School of Economics and Professor of Practice in the Department of Economics at the American University of Beirut. He earned his PhD in economics from the University of California, Berkeley. In 1987, he joined the World Bank’s Research Complex, concentrating on international finance, trade, and macroeconomics. Following the Oslo Agreements in 1992, he became the country economist for the West Bank and Gaza, later serving as a regional economist in the Middle East. Ishac was key in establishing the Economic Research Forum and the Mediterranean Development Forum. From 1996 to 2002, he led the Economic Policy group at the World Bank Institute, where he developed the Attacking Poverty Program and contributed to the Global Development Network. Ishac served as the World Bank’s Country Director for Ethiopia and Sudan from 2002 to 2007 and for Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, and Guinea from 2007 to 2011. He led initiatives such as Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net and the Protection of Basic Services Program and projects in West Africa aimed at supporting agriculture, natural resource development, and youth employment. Ishac has taught at New York University, Columbia University, and Harvard University, where he was also the Director for Africa and the Middle East at the Growth Lab of the Center for International Development from 2011 to 2014. He was a visiting scholar at Harvard in Spring 2023 and 2024 and recently held the chair of the Socio-Economy of the Arab World at Paris Sciences et Lettres. Ishac frequently consults for governments and international organisations, focusing on policy issues in Sudan, Yemen, Algeria, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt. He directs the Political Economy programme of the Economic Research Forum, overseeing projects on crony capitalism and opinion surveys. His current research interests include the political economy of the Middle East and broader development challenges.