The Team

Imara Africa Consulting leverages a strong network of experts in development policy, with over five decades of combined experience in research and consultancy in different African regions.

Lead Economist

Barbara Barungi

Barbara has over 20 years’ experience as an economist and development policy practitioner in Africa.

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Chartered Accountant

Richard Okon

Richard is a Chartered Accountant with over 15 years’ experience in aviation banking financial advisory services, including private equity and PPPs.

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Economist

Olugbenga Adesida

Olugbenga has over 25 years’ experience in leadership development and economic policy.

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Barbara Barungi

Lead Economist

Founder, Imara Africa Consulting
M.Phil. International Finance (Glasgow University, UK)
Diploma Developmental Policy (Glasgow University, UK)
BA Economics and Sociology (Makerere University, Uganda)

Barbara has over 20 years’ experience as an economist and development policy practitioner in Africa. Career highlights include:

Advising the Rwandan government on social sector policy issues and helping to establish a poverty observatory. She mobilised cost sharing of one million British Pounds to support the unit and a nation-wide participatory poverty assessment.
Working for the African Development Bank (AfDB), where she:
- Initiated dialogue with ministries of finance and key sectorial ministries, the World Bank, IMF and bilateral donors.
- Helped shape the AfDB’s work in fragile states like Liberia and Zimbabwe, by coordinating the Bank support in the areas of public financial management, external debt management and statistical capacity building. She ran the Bank’s operations portfolio for public financial management in Somalia.
- Served as AfDB Lead Economist in Nigeria, engaging closely with the Nigerian government and development partners on the Economic Growth and Recovery Plan (2017-2020).
- Worked with several Nigerian state governments on economic policy and PPP infrastructure development financing.
Working at the United Nations Development Programme (2001-2009), leading the Poverty Reduction and Macroeconomics Management Unit and managing a multidisciplinary team of four experts working in the Southern Africa Development Community region. Barbara advised and brought technical support to 14 southern African-based UNDP country offices and national governments on formulating poverty reduction-related policy, analysis and monitoring. Barbara has visited and worked in at least 25 African countries and has lived in Nigeria, South Africa, Tunisia and Uganda.

Barbara has visited and worked in at least 25 African countries and has lived in Nigeria, South Africa, Tunisia and Uganda.

Olugbenga Adesida

Economist

PhD (London School of Economics)
MA Economics (City College of New York)
BA Economics (City College of New York)

Olugbenga has over 25 years’ experience in leadership development and economic policy. He is partner and co-founder of a business development firm, Ihaba, and leads the incubation of the mobile app and games development company, Bonako. He serves as a board member for the Africa Leadership Institute (South Africa), The Pedro Pires Leadership Institute (Cape Verde) and The Jose Maria Neves Foundation for Governance (Cape Verde).

Career highlights include:

15 years as a strategy consultant in Africa (2001-2016). He provided technical support in the formulation of Cape Verde’s poverty reduction strategy documents and the development of the Millennium Challenge Account compacts that raised over 170 million US Dollars in grants. From 2014-2016 he advised the Cape Verde Minister of Finance on public-private partnerships and helped to create the country’s PPP Unit.
High-level advisory work at the United Nations Development Programme(1992-1998), helping many African countries to adopt strategic long-term thinking and scenarios planning exercises. He co-designed and co-facilitated the Cape Verde Vision document, South Africa’s 2020 Scenarios and the Nigeria 2025 Scenarios (Naija Junction).

Olugbenga has visited over half of the African countries and has lived in Nigeria, USA, Cote d’Ivoire and Cape Verde.

Richard Okon

Chartered Accountant

MBA (University of Navarra, Spain)
ACA (Institute of Chartered Accountants, Nigeria)
BSC Accounting (University of Lagos, Nigeria)

Richard is a Chartered Accountant with over 15 years’ experience in aviation banking financial advisory services, including private equity and PPPs. He is the Chief Executive Office of Halkon Investment Limited. Halkon provides advisory services on mergers and acquisitions and mobilising finance for oil and gas sector investments and IPP projects. He is also Director of Pilot Finance Company Limited and Raerope Capital Limited (UK), providing input into overall strategic direction of both companies.

Career highlights include:

Working at PBTG Consulting (1999-2007), first as a Senior Analyst then as Associate – Group Head, designing and implementing corporate reorganisation programmes and working on mergers, acquisitions, restructuring, systems design and implementation, financial controls and training, strategy formulation and implementation, IT, business process review and technical management support.
Working in the banking sector at Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation(1994-1999) in its Special Investigation and Monitoring, Field Examinations and Administration departments. He co-led teams that examined over fifty community, merchant and commercial banks, and played an active role in revoking and liquidating over 26 of the country’s banks.

Richard lives in Nigeria.