Who we are

Mark is the Director of Curtis Research and has over 20 years experience of working with NGOs in developing countries. He is a former Research Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), Director of the World Development Movement and Head of Policy / Advocacy at Christian Aid and ActionAid.

Mark is the author of six books and numerous reports and articles on development and foreign policy issues. He is former Research Fellow at the University of Strathclyde (Glasgow) and former Visiting Research Fellow at the Institut Français des Relations Internationales, Paris and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik, Bonn.

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Honest Prosper Ngowi is a senior lecturer in Economics and Business at Mzumbe University, Tanzania. He researches and publishes widely on macro-and micro-economics, international trade, Foreign Direct Investment, privatization and Public Private Partnerships. He is an Associate Member of UNCTAD's Virtual Institute, the Organisation for Social Science Research in Africa (Ethiopia), the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (Senegal); Norwegian Society for Business Administration (Norway) and the International Academy of African Business and Development (IAABD).

Paul Jere is an experienced consultant based in Malawi, specialising in land policy and governance, poverty and economic analysis, food security, markets and value chain analysis, disaster risk reduction, social protection, environment & natural resources, climate change, livelihoods and vulnerability analysis, and HIV/AIDS. Paul is a former Lecturer in Development Economics and Demography at Bunda College of Agriculture at the University of Malawi. He holds an MSC in Agricultural Economics.

Khadija Sharife is an investigative researcher and writer, based in South Africa, with a focus on financial and resource opacity. She writes for a variety of media and academic publications. She is the lead African forensics investigator for Investigative Dashboard, senior investigative researcher and coordinator for African Network of Centers for Investigative Reporting (ANCIR) and author of Tax Us If You Can Africa. She coordinates the South African branch of Environmental Justice Organisations, Liabilities and Trade (EJOLT) at the Centre for Civil Society and is affiliated with the Tax Justice Network and World Policy Institute (US).

Samuel Jibao holds a PhD in Economics and is Director of the Centre for Economic Research and Capacity Building in Sierra Leone. He is also Senior Researcher at the African Tax Institute (University of Pretoria, South Africa) and Research Fellow at the International Centre for Tax and Development (Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK). He is a former Deputy Director for Monitoring, Research and Planning Department at the National Revenue Authority of Sierra Leone.

Rafiq Hajat is the founding Director of the Institute for Policy Interaction (IPI) in Malawi, which focuses on mining issues. IPI's main focus areas are: monitoring the state of governance & human rights through Parliamentary observation, elections observation and policy analysis. Rafiq is a prominent civil rights activist in Malawi and a founder of Transparency International's Malawi chapter. He is also the elected Chair of the International Alliance on Natural Resources in Africa (IANRA).

Laura is an environmental economist with considerable international field and research experience in sustainable agriculture and rural development. She has a Ph.D. in Development Economics from the University of Roma Tre and spent two years in Mozambique and Lesotho working with organisations such as the UN's FAO. She has taught micro-economics and development economics at undergraduate and postgraduate level and has worked as a research consultant for the World Bank, FAO and IFAD. Laura is the editor of a book on agricultural biotechnologies and author of peer-reviewed articles in international journals.

Tom is a London-based investigative researcher and sociologist. He has a PhD in sociology from the University of Bath. His research work focuses on corporations, tax, British foreign policy and corruption. He has written and contributed research for numerous media articles, reports and books and was a co-editor of the New Left Project.