Gracelin Baskaran

Gracelin Baskaran is a nonresident fellow in the Africa Growth Initiative, within the Global Economy and Development program at the Brookings Institution. Her work at Brookings focuses on managing the economic impacts of climate change, leveraging mineral resources to support the clean energy transition and economic growth in Africa, and utilizing trade as a tool to build the private sector in emerging economies.

She is also a consultant economist at the World Bank, where she works in the Office of the Chief Economist for Africa and the Equitable Growth, Finance and Institutions Group. Baskaran is also a bye-fellow in economics at Lucy Cavendish College at the University of Cambridge.

A U.S. national, Baskaran spent seven years living in South Africa and working in southern and eastern Africa. She has engaged extensively with ministries of finance, central banks, and ministries of trade and industry in the region, in addition to the private sector. Baskaran has published widely, including journal articles, book chapters, policy papers, and World Bank reports and books. She has also been a contributing author to the Brookings Institution’s flagship Foresight Africa report. She has been interviewed as an expert by television and media outlets such as Voice of America and the South China Morning Post.

Baskaran was a Fulbright Scholar and holds a doctorate from the University of Cambridge.