George Ayittey

George Ayittey, formerly an FPRI Associate Scholar, is Distinguished Economist in Residence at The American University. Born in Ghana, he earned a B.Sc. (Economics) from the University of Ghana, Legon, an M.A. (Economics) from the University of Western Ontario, and a Ph.D. at the University of Manitoba. He has taught at Wayne State College in Nebraska and Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania. In 1988, he accepted a National Fellowship at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University in California. He left Hoover in 1989 to join the Heritage Foundation as a Bradley Resident Scholar. In 1993, he started The Free Africa Foundation in Washington, DC, to serve as a catalyst for reform in Africa. He is the author of Indigenous African Institutions (Transnational Publishers, 1991; 2nd ed. 2004); Africa Betrayed (St. Martin’s Press, 1992); The Blueprint For Ghana’s Economic Recovery (Africana Publishers, 1997); Africa In Chaos (St. Martin’s Press, 1998); and Africa Unchained: The Blueprint for Development (Palgrave/MacMillan, 2004).