Biographical Note

Ladipo ADAMOLEKUN, a Nigerian national, is an independent scholar.  He is currently on a part-time contract appointment as Professor of Management at the Federal University of Technology, Akure, Nigeria.  His areas of professional competence and interest are governance and management issues including, civil service and administrative reform, anti-corruption, decentralization, institutional development, international development management, and comparative management; federalism; and the politics of development.    (He is fluent in English and French).

He retired from the World Bank in July 2004 as a Lead Public Sector Management Specialist.  Prior to joining the World Bank in January 1987, he was a university teacher in Nigeria’s Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, for about twenty years, the last ten as a Professor of Public Administration. During this period, he served as Head, Department of Public Administration and Dean, Faculty of Administration.  His other working experience includes a one-year stint as a Public Administration Officer in the United Nation’s Secretariat (1975-76) and short stints as Visiting Professor in universities in Benin Republic, France and the USA.

Professor Adamolekun holds a B.A. (French) and M.Phil. (Public Administration) degrees from universities in Nigeria, and a D.Phil. (Politics) from the University of Oxford, England.  He has published over twenty books and monographs and numerous journal articles. In 2002, he published an award winning article on “Africa’s evolving civil service systems: three challenges – state continuity, efficient service delivery and accountability” in International Review of Administrative Sciences (Brussels), 68, 373-387.  His most recent publication is a monograph on Re-orienting public management in Africa: selected issues and some country experiences, forthcoming in the Economic Research Working Paper Series of the African Development Bank, 2005.