Why No African Economists Have Won Nobel Prizes

I have been thinking about why no African economist has ever won a Nobel Prize. Is it because many African economies are still developing and the Nobel committee thinks we have nothing to contribute? Is it because most African economies are not industrialized? Or maybe they are seen as too simple? What does it take for economists in Africa to be recognized and for their work to be taken seriously? Perhaps African economists are not publishing enough in top journals. Another issue could be that these journals have strict barriers that can feel unfair. African economists need to be bold and confident. They should take pride in their work and rely less on foreign funding. There is a lot that can be accomplished with even small local funding in Economics. I believe what really matters for global recognition, whether for a Nobel Prize or other important platforms, is the depth of the work done by economists.

Maybe Africa and the global South should create their own version of the Nobel Prize that recognizes their efforts and encourages economists. We could even include other sciences in this award based on their impact and excellence. I believe we have enough private companies that can seize this chance and make history just like Alfred Nobel and the Sveriges Riksbank have done. We have successful banks, mining, and oil companies in Africa, including Nigeria, that can fill this gap if African scientists and economists are not seen as deserving of the Swedish Prize. But that might seem reactive. For now, let's focus on the 131-year-old Nobel Prize for science and the 58-year-old Swedish Central Bank prize for economics. I hope we understand the importance of Economics in Africa. It affects everything. As Lord Maynard Keynes once said, no area of human activity is beyond the reach of an economist. So, creating awards that celebrate deep thought and research that pushes the continent forward is worthwhile.

These thoughts came back to me recently during the Bank of Industry's annual lecture when Professor Asad Alam talked about Robert Solow’s Total Factor Productivity function. This function explains part of an economy’s output that labor and capital do not account for. I quickly pointed out that Nigerian scholars should be examining Solow’s formula to find ways to analyze the part known as Total Factor Productivity. This is particularly relevant for countries like Nigeria, where many activities that drive growth go unrecorded due to our large informal economy and cultural differences that Solow and other economic experts may not have considered. This brings us back to the four factors of production we learned in secondary school: land, labor, capital, and entrepreneurship. These are still taught the same way today, even up to university level. Some PhD holders in Economics still swear by that formula. In earlier articles, I challenged this theory from Adam Smith’s time. I suggested that there are other productivity functions today that can stand alone and may be even more powerful than the traditional land, labor, capital, and entrepreneurship. These include technology, information, data, knowledge, and even AI. Some of these can have a significant impact on their own. So, the understanding of production factors in economics needs to evolve.

This example is just one way we can challenge economic theories using African experiences. There are many other ways that the complexity needed to enrich knowledge can come from Africa. Among the many economists in Africa, I believe there are many hardworking and intelligent ones dedicated to important research. We have the aftermath of economic shocks from our shift to modern systems through colonization. We have the impact of slavery, which affected our population, and we wonder how different things might have been without it. We also have our rich resources, which are often blamed for our complacency. We must analyze our cultures, espionage, the Cold War, and geopolitics, like the China-Western relationship, when discussing our economies and looking to the future. Some of these factors are hard to measure, making them even more interesting and challenging to explain. If we don’t write about what makes our economies unique and the honest problems we face in advancing, no one else will.

We could also look into how low literacy levels and weak political systems affect economics or study resource dependency. The key is to never assume that all relevant research on our situation and economics has been done or that only non-Africans can understand and discuss our unique issues. That would be a significant defeat for us. African economists must be brave, articulate, and bold.

We saw a similar situation in the health sector. The biggest tragedy during COVID-19 was how African scientists and voices were dismissed, minimized, and ignored. I recently saw videos of African leaders worried about how to find vaccines to save lives. At the start of the pandemic, Western scientists and leaders predicted that Africa would suffer the most, thinking we were already struggling with diseases. Those who thought differently, who tried to explore local remedies or lifestyle benefits, were labeled conspiracy theorists or dismissed. Yet, by the end, Africa had the lowest number of casualties globally. For instance, Nigeria had under 5,000 deaths, even when I saw Mrs Bill Gates saying we would have so many deaths that corpses would line the streets. Did the world learn from this, or did we ignore it? Did we do anything in Africa that made us less likely to die from COVID-19? Are there African remedies that could help the world? Or is there an underlying bias at play?

Another recent example comes from geography but connects deeply to economics. Flemish geographer Geraldus Mercator created a world map in 1569 that was practical for navigation. However, it downplayed the size of Africa. I remember a young American guy discussing this on social media a few years ago. I shared his video, but he was ignored and ridiculed. Eventually, Togo took the matter to the United Nations, and the World Map was corrected. Still, many African analysts claimed it didn’t matter. That victory was another chance for self-deprecation and a blame game that has led to ‘learned helplessness.’

Some asked if this would help us manage resources better. Others said no, believing we were destined for this. They thought everything could be explained by corruption and our underdevelopment. They overlooked the principle behind it and justified the miseducation that has shaped our thinking and futures. They prefer to rely on false information in all areas rather than investigate the truth about ourselves and the world or support those who do. The simple questions are: Would Africa be taken more seriously if its true size was known since 1569? Would we have fought colonialism more fiercely if we understood the full extent of the land taken? Would we have a stronger voice in global discussions like the United Nations? Would our understanding of our potential be clearer? Why have we taught our children these inaccuracies for so long? It is this same tragedy that keeps us relying on economic theories from Adam Smith’s Scottish context in 1776 or David Ricardo’s Comparative Advantage theory from 1820. We need to think for ourselves!

There are many economic issues that African economists are better suited to explore. We could write about informality since we have the largest informal economies due to historical disruptions and distrust of foreign systems. We could research how history impacts economies or the lack of data needed for economic decisions. What about assessing domestic investment in informal economies, where capital formation happens quickly but is often ignored? We must always remember that not all research relevant to our context has been completed, nor should we believe that only non-Africans can understand our unique issues. That would be a significant defeat. African economists must be bold, articulate, and daring. The sooner we start on this path, the sooner we will gain the recognition we deserve, and more importantly, our economies and people will benefit.

Let’s consider the topics that have won Nobel Prizes in economics around the world, not to criticize them but to inspire us that we can achieve this too. Here are a few examples:

For 2026, Robert E Hall and Michael Woodford won the Sveriges Riksbank Prize for research that changed how we understand stabilization policy. Their New Keynesian models explain how stabilization policy affects business cycles and are now used by central banks globally. Nigeria’s Central Bank under Olayemi Cardoso should also be noted for practical applications of original thinking that repositioned our economy. In 2025, Joel Mokyr, Phillipe Aghton, and Peter Howitt received the Nobel for showing how innovation and technology drive economic growth and combat stagnation. This should be an African story and should not be difficult for our economists to create. It connects to Joseph Schumpeter’s ideas of Creative Destruction and Innovative Entrepreneurship, which were the basis of my PhD dissertation.

In 2024, Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson won the Nobel for studying how institutions form and impact prosperity. Their book, Why Nations Fail, is a testament to their work. I find it heavy and complex, and many economists worldwide have criticized their reasoning. In 2023, Claudia Goldin received the Nobel for ‘advancing our understanding of women’s labor market outcomes.’ I believe there are female economists in Africa who could contribute significantly to understanding women’s roles in GDP, entrepreneurship, families, and national development, even from a historical perspective. I conclude that the world lacks enough African opinions.

Other winners include Ben Bernanke, Philip Dybvig, and Douglas Diamond in 2022 for their research on banks and financial crises; David Card, Joshua D Angrist, and Guido W Imbens in 2021 for contributions to labor economics; Paul R Milgrom and Robert B Wilson in 2020 for new auction theories; Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer in 2019 for experimental approaches to reducing global poverty; Richard H Thaler in 2018 for contributions to behavioral economics, and so on. I don’t think any of these topics were difficult to understand. They all tell human stories related to the discipline, and now Africa has many more human stories to share. African economists, rise up, speak out, and showcase your work. Our time is now!