Victor Murinde

Professor Victor Murinde is the Executive Director of the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC). He is a distinguished financial economist with more than 25 years of post-PhD experience, mainly involving research and teaching, but also including senior-level stints in practitioner, policy, and consultancy roles for governments and leading international organizations. Previously, he was the AXA Professor of Global Finance and the Director of the Centre for Global Finance at SOAS University of London; the founding Director of the African Development Institute at the African Development Bank (2011-2014); and Professor of Development Finance at the University of Birmingham (1999-2017). 

His current research interests are forward-looking, underpinned by the ongoing shifts in economics and finance, including FinTech, climate risk finance (disaster risk finance), Sino-African trade and investment relations, and applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning methods to banking and finance. He has contributed over 120 research papers, to the literature in economics, banking and finance. As part of building networks, he served as Chair, Econometric Society Africa Region Standing Committee, 2014-2018. 

For his research and networking, he was awarded the Doctoris Honoris Causa by Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech) on 17 September 2003, with the dictum, “in recognition of your merits in Financial Economics and Banking and promotion of British-Estonian collaboration in research”. In terms of research impact, his research resonates with policy and practice, as endorsed in research impact assessments in the UK. According to the UK Research Excellence Framework 2014 (REF2014), his research on “Shaping Bank Regulatory Reforms in Africa” was recognized for outstanding impact. Also, in the recent UK Research Excellence Framework 2021 (REF2021), his joint Impact Case Study on “Climate risk and cost of capital” (together with Ulrich Volz and Gerhard Kling) was recognized for exceptional impact.

His ‘global name recognition’ status is evidenced by honours and induction from learned societies: He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society; a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences; and a Fellow of Royal Society of Arts.