Dambisa Moyo - Background

Zambian born economist, Dambias Moyo started out with an undergraduate degree in Chemistry, and went on to do an MBA at the American University in Washington DC, an MPA at Harvard University and a DPhil in Economics at Oxford University. She is on the board of directors for the Chevron Corporation and the 3M Company. She has also worked for the World Bank and Goldman Sachs.

Dambias Moyo is a high-profile economist who regularly features on business news channels, TedX lectures and even major television shows such as Real Time with Bill Maher. She has written a number of best selling books in Economics and the Political Economy. Her most recent book, Edge of Chaos: Why Democracy Is Failing to Deliver Economic Growth – and How to Fix It (2018) spent some time in the New York Times bestseller list.

Edge of Chaos

One of the central themes of Edge of Chaos is how population growth, rising income inequality, commodity scarcity and technological development are undermining economic welfare and social cohesion in many countries in the world. Moyo believes a growing underclass of people in the world economy are stuck in low paid employment, poverty and  have little political representation. She believes this underclass are a risk to economic, political and social stability in countries across the world.

Moyo believes the solution to these problems lies in developing a more long-term strategic approach to economic and political decision making where the private sector and government sector work in partnership to manage and fund long-term solutions to issues such as low labour productivity, static incomes and inequity.

Two interesting areas of focus in Edge of Chaos are, firstly, the need to reward a nation’s politicians more highly and then make them more accountable for their decisions. The hope is that this will make them take a more long - term view in their decision making. Secondly, Moyo believes that moving more resources globally towards education would be the single most important policy to solving the problems facing the world's poor.