Athens, Ga. – Emmanuel Fiadzo, the economic governance
cluster leader for the World Bank in Liberia, will deliver this year’s Darl
Snyder lecture on Thursday, March 6, at 10 a.m. in the University of Georgia
Chapel.
Fiadzo, who earned his doctorate in 1998, was the first
graduate of the housing and consumer economics doctoral program in the UGA
College of Family and Consumer Sciences.
“This is the first time that the lecture series is featuring
a UGA alum,” according to Lioba Moshi, director of the African Studies
Institute, which sponsors the lecture. “Among the African graduate students to
come through here, he has risen in the ranks of the World Bank so quickly and
has worked with a number of African countries so well.”
Currently, Fiadzo also serves as the manager of the World
Bank’s governance and economic management assistance program to the government
of Liberia. Liberia has endured more than a decade of civil strife that has
devastated its political and financial institutions.
Fiadzo, who originally is from Ghana, began his career with
an internship at the World Bank while still a graduate student. That internship
led to a position as an independent economic advisor in a number of African
countries, including Mozambique, Tanzania, Nigeria, Senegal, Mali, and Ghana.
From 2000-2003, he served as the economic and financial
advisor to two prime ministers and former President Ange-Felix Patasse in the
Central African Republic.
After spending two years as a fellow in housing studies at
Harvard University, Fiadzo was hired by the World Bank as an economist. Prior to his work in Liberia, he led the
World Bank team that helped the Gabonese government develop a poverty reduction
strategy and he wrote Gabon’s first public expenditure and financial
accountability review in 20 years.
The Darl Snyder Lecture honors the retired director of the
UGA Office of International Development.
“Dr. Snyder is responsible for many of the African students
who have studied at the University of Georgia,” according to Moshi. “He was an
inspiring teacher and an inspiring administrator. This lecture helps us to
bring distinguished scholars and contributors to the study of Africa to
campus.”
Moshi credits Snyder with providing African faculty the support
they needed to establish the African Studies Program at UGA in 1987. The
program was elevated to institute status in 2001.
He also helped develop a number of programs that have
connected UGA with various African countries. In 1980, he helped develop a
proposal that led the U.S. Agency for International Development to implement a
worldwide collaborative research support program on peanuts. He also was
involved in the development, and served as technical director, of a
USAID-funded agricultural human resource development project in what is now
Burkina Faso.
The Snyder Lecture is open to the public. For more
information, call Akinloye Ojo at 706/542-7730 or email him at akinloye@uga.edu.
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Note to editors: For an image of Emmanuel Fiadzo, contact
Cynthia C. Hoke at 706/542-8083 or cchoke@uga.edu.
