Alan Hirsch has been director of the Graduate School of Development Policy and Practice at UCT since 2013. He was born in Cape Town and educated in Economics, Economic History and History at UCT, Wits and Columbia. After economic research and teaching at the University of Cape Town, he joined the South African Department of Trade and Industry in 1995, managing industry and technology policy. He moved to the Presidency in 2002. He managed economic policy in the South African Presidency, represented the Presidency at the G20, and was co-chair of the G20 Development Working Group. He has served or serves on several boards, and is associated with a range of policy research initiatives including the International Growth Centre for which he is the Zambia Country Director and the European Centre for Development Policy Management where he is a board member. He was a visiting scholar at the Harvard Business School, was a regular visiting professor at the Graduate School of Governance at Maastricht University and a member of the OECD secretary-general’s Inclusive Growth Advisory Group. He writes about economic development issues, including Season of Hope - Economic Reform under Mandela and Mbeki and recently co-edited The Oxford Companion to South African Economics.
