Charles Gore

Division for Africa, LDCs and Special Programmes, UNCTAD

 

Charles Gore is currently Special Coordinator for Cross-sectoral Issues in the Division for Africa, Least Developed Countries and Special Programmes in UNCTAD. In this role, he directs UNCTAD's research and policy analysis on Africa and least developed countries.

He has over thirty years experience in international development with a primary focus on globalization, development strategies and poverty. He has worked as an academic and an international consultant, and has conducted and managed research within ILO and UNCTAD, including work on social exclusion in a global context, East Asian development success and the development problems of Africa and least developed countries. Between 1999 and 2008, he directed the research for UNCTAD's Least Developed Countries Report and in that context elaborated a structuralist approach to trade, development and poverty reduction centred on developing productive capacities and the associated expansion of productive employment. He also led the team and co-authored The Least Developed Countries Report 2007: Knowledge, Technological Learning and Innovation for Development.

He is the author or editor of various books including: Regions In Question: Space, Development Theory and Regional Policy (1984); Social Exclusion: Rhetoric, Reality, Responses (1995); Social Exclusion and Anti-Poverty Strategy (1997); a special issue of the Cambridge Journal of Economics on African Economic Development in a Comparative Perspective (2002); and Beyond Conventional Wisdom in Development Policy: An Intellectual History of UNCTAD 1964-2004. He has published numerous articles, including “The Rise and Fall of the Washington Consensus as a Paradigm for Developing Countries” which has regularly been one of the top ten downloaded articles in World Development, and "Which Growth Theory is Good for the Poor?" (European Journal of Development Research, vol.19, no.1), which links technological change with poverty reduction.

He was a member of the UN Experts Group of the UN Millennium Project on MDGs. He is presently a member of the Academic Council of the Swiss Network for International Studies and a member of the Council of the UK Development Studies Association. He was appointed Honorary Professor o