Grieve Chelwa

Chair, Department of Social Sciences and Associate Professor of Political Economy

Grieve Chelwa is the Chair of the Department of Social Sciences and Associate Professor of Political Economy at The Africa Institute, Global Studies University. He is a member of the Papal Commission on the Debt and Development Crisis in the Global South, convened by the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences at the Vatican. He was also recognized by The Africa Report as one of the "10 African Scholars to Watch in 2025."

Before joining The Africa Institute, Chelwa served as Director of Research at the Institute on Race, Power, and Political Economy at The New School. He was also a Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business, where he directed the MBA program. His academic journey includes being the inaugural postdoctoral fellow at the Center for African Studies at Harvard University and a visiting postdoctoral fellow at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER) at the University of the Witwatersrand. In addition, he is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

His scholarly contributions have appeared in prestigious journals, including the Journal of Economic Literature, Applied Economics Letters, Social Science & Medicine, Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Economy and Society, PLOS ONE, British Medical Journal, Energy Policy, and the South African Journal of Economics, among others. His research has received support from notable foundations, including the Carnegie Foundation, the Gates Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and the Open Society Foundations. He is a prolific commentator on African economic matters, with his insights published in prominent media outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, CGTN, BBC, Mail & Guardian, People’s Dispatch, Lusaka Times, and Business Day. In 2023, Chelwa was appointed advisory board member for Economists For Future.

Chelwa earned his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Cape Town, where he focused on the economics of tobacco control in Africa. His academic journey includes a Master's degree in Economics from the University of Cape Town and a Bachelor's degree in Economics from the University of Zambia.

Research

Chelwa's research focuses on political economy, particularly its implications on the prospects for African economic development.

Publications

Bhaskaran, Suparna, Chelwa, Grieve, and Hamilton, Darrick. “Comment on Chong 2025”. Current Anthropology (2025).
Stiglitz, Joseph, Guzman, Martin, Chelwa, Grieve, et al. “The Jubilee Report: A Blueprint for Tackling the Debt and Development Crises and Creating the Financial Foundations for a Sustainable People-Centered Global Economy” (2025). The Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia University.
Chelwa, Grieve. “Development as Emancipation”. Review of African Political Economy (2025).
Chelwa, Grieve, “New Directions in the Study of Inequality in Africa”. African Social Research (2025).
De Renzio, Paolo, Kaulule, Siame Ntazana and Chelwa, Grieve. “Accountability Failures: Investigating the roots of Zambia’s 2020 debt default”. Public Debt Integrity Series of AFRODAD & the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (2025).
Chelwa, Grieve and Prashad, Vijay. “Africa’s Faustian Bargain with the International Monetary Fund”. Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research Dossier No. 88 (2025).
Chelwa, Grieve, Kaulule, Siame Ntazana and De Renzio, Paolo. “External Forces and Zambia’s Permanent Debt Crisis.” Development (2025).
Chelwa, Grieve, Mushinge, Bernadette, et al. “Farmers’ Knowledge Improves Identification of Drought Impacts: A Nationwide Statistical Analysis in Zambia” Climate Services 38 (2025): 100543
Chelwa, Grieve (Ed). Can Africans Do Economics? (Johannesburg: Inkani Books, 2024).
Chelwa, Grieve and Prashad, Vijay. “How Neoliberalism Has Wielded ‘Corruption’ to Privatise Life in Africa”. Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research Dossier No. 82 (2024).
Chelwa, Grieve, Mashekwa Maboshe, and Darrick Hamilton. "The Racial Wealth Gap in South Africa and the United States." Review of Political Economy (2024): 1-18.
“China and Africa’s attempts at Industrialization”. Quarterly Journal of Chinese Thought (2023).
Chelwa, Grieve. 2023. “CODESRIA Bulletin Online, No. 9, October 2023 - Development, Development Cooperation and Africa in the Twenty-First Century”.
Chelwa, Grieve, Darrick Hamilton, and Avi Green. "Identity group stratification, political economy & inclusive economic rights." Dædalus 152, no. 1 (2023): 154-167.
Chelwa, Grieve, and Prashad, Vijay. “Life or Debt: The stranglehold of Neocolonialism and Africa’s search for alternatives”. Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research Dossier No. 63 (2023).
Chelwa, Grieve, Darrick Hamilton, and James Stewart. "Stratification economics: Core constructs and policy implications." Journal of Economic Literature 60, no. 2 (2022): 377-399.
Amarante, Verónica, Ronelle Burger, Grieve Chelwa, John Cockburn, Ana Kassouf, Andrew McKay, and Julieta Zurbrigg. "Underrepresentation of developing country researchers in development research." Applied economics letters 29, no. 17 (2022): 1659-1664.
Chelwa, Grieve. "Does economics have an ‘Africa problem’?." Economy and Society 50, no. 1 (2021): 78-99.
Chelwa, Grieve. “Thandika Mkandawire: A ‘Young’ African Economist’s Appreciation”, African Studies 79, no. 4 (2020): 478-484.
Chelwa, Grieve. “Pop Developmentalism in Africa”. CODESRIA Bulletin, no.1(2020): 1-5
Nyagwachi, Abel, Grieve Chelwa, and Corne van Walbeek. “The effect of tobacco & alcohol control policies on household spending patterns in Kenya: An approach using Matched Difference in Differences”. Social Science and Medicine 256, (2020): 113029

Book Chapter

Bhorat, Haroon, Grieve Chelwa, Karmen Naidoo, and Benjamin Stanwix. “Resource Dependence and Inequality in Africa: Impacts, consequences and potential solutions”. In Income Inequality Trends in sub-Saharan Africa, edited by Ayodele Odusola et al., 129-148. New York: United Nations Development Programme, 2017.

Book Reviews

Grieve Chelwa. “Innovating Development Strategies in Africa: the role of international, national and regional actors by Landry Signe”. Journal of Modern African Studies 58, no. 1(2020): 161-162
Grieve Chelwa. “Zambia: Building Prosperity from Resource Wealth by Collier et al. (Eds)”. Enterprise and Society 18, no. 1(2017): 229-231