Louise Fox

Louise Fox is a nonresident senior fellow with the Africa Growth Initiative in the Global Economy and Development program at the Brookings Institution and a senior research associate at ODI in London. An internationally recognized development economist, Fox specializes in strategies for employment creation, opportunity expansion, economic empowerment, inclusive growth, and poverty reduction, with a particular focus on Africa and other developing regions. She has advised governments, international organizations, philanthropic institutions, and nonprofit organizations on development diagnostics, policy strategy, results measurement, and program evaluation.

Fox is currently leading and contributing to major research and advisory initiatives on employment, climate adaptation, food security, resilience, and inclusive growth in Africa. She has served on the United Nations High-Level Panel on the Development of a Multidimensional Vulnerability Index, the Economic Advisory Panel of the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the Advisory and Review Panel for IFAD’s 2025 Rural Development Report, and the advisory panel for the Inclusive Growth Financing Forum.

From 2016 to 2019, Fox served as chief economist of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). In that role, she provided economic advice to agency leadership, strengthened evidence-based decision making across USAID, led professional development for the agency’s economists, and helped build a community of practice for economic analysis. Her work included developing a strategic framework for employment creation programming and advising on youth employment strategies for poor and rural areas.

Before joining USAID, Fox spent nearly three decades at the World Bank, where she held senior positions including lead economist. Her work at the bank focused on sub-Saharan Africa, poverty reduction, economic management, employment, labor markets, public expenditures, social protection, pension reform, education, and child welfare. She contributed to major analytical and policy work on inclusive growth, poverty reduction, job creation, and economic transformation.

Fox has published widely in academic, policy, and practitioner outlets. Her books and major reports include Youth Employment in Sub-Saharan Africa, Working Out of Poverty: Job Creation and the Quality of Growth in Africa, Attacking Africa’s Poverty: Experience From the Ground, Education Reform in Mozambique: Lessons and Challenges, and Beating the Odds: Sustaining Inclusion in a Growing Economy, which received the World Bank Africa Region Chief Economist’s Award for Excellence. She was also a contributing author to Averting the Old Age Crisis: Policies to Protect the Old and Promote Growth.

Her scholarly articles have appeared in outlets including the Journal of Development Studies, Journal of African Economies, and Development Policy Review. She has also authored or co-authored research and policy reports for institutions including the World Bank, USAID, AGRA, the Global Center on Adaptation, IFAD, ODI, and the Hewlett Foundation.

Fox has also held academic and advisory roles, including as a visiting professor in the Master of Development Practice program at the University of California, Berkeley, and as an adviser to graduate students at the Blum Center for Developing Economies.