Francis Odhuno

BA, MA (Kenyatta University) (Kenya), CPA (K)

Francis joined the PhD programme having completed both his Bachelors and Masters degrees in Economics at Kenyatta University in Kenya, before qualifying as a certified public accountant by private study. Before joining the PhD programme, Francis spent five years with the Kenyan Government's Ministry of Trade and Industry as an industrial development officer and economist before moving on to Ernst & Young for a three year stint as a tax advisor specializing in customs and international trade consulting.

Francis' thesis is on using time-series data to study civil war influence in (post-)conflict economies, Uganda, in particular. In a field where data limitations exist, Francis chose Uganda partly because, for a substantial amount of her independence era, its political and economic progress was interrupted by protracted and brutal civil war; it is probably the country for which the longest run of newspaper reports about civil war is available so that it makes an interesting case study. The objective of Francis' thesis is to introduce newly collected time series of the indicators of civil war violence in econometric models to explain the dynamics of Uganda's post-conflict political economy, and attempt to answer three questions: (1) What explains the number of people killed by the government and rebel armies in the cycle of insurgent violence after combat? (2) What causes industrial output fluctuations: should civil war violence be blamed? (3) Does civil war violence contribute to exchange rate fluctuations? The empirical evidence on the influence of civil war on key macroeconomic and political variables is currently needed, particularly because of the severe difficulties or disturbances that Uganda continues to face in her attempts to industrialize quickly. Understanding the influence of civil war violence would help also in resolving the prevailing controversy about its relative significance in the country's political economy during the war-peace transition period.

Contact details

Office CO4.14
Tel 64 3 479 8152
Email francis.odhuno@otago.ac.nz

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