Dr Greg Mills heads the Johannesburg-based Brenthurst Foundation, established in 2005 by the Oppenheimer family to strengthen African economic performance.
Previously he was the Director of Studies and then the National Director of SAIIA from 1994-2005.
With Brenthurst he has directed numerous reform projects in 12 African countries and almost continuously at various levels of government in South Africa from the Foundation’s outset.
He also sat on the Danish Africa Commission and on the African Development Bank’s high-level panel on fragile states, and served four deployments to Afghanistan with the British Army as the adviser to the commander. He has also worked extensively in Colombia, and with a variety of African governments in both improving the conditions for peacebuilding and investment, including through the Zambezi Protocol on the natural resource sector.
He has been in Afghanistan twice this year as a guest of the president to conduct research into his forthcoming book on foreign aid and, this past month, to shoot a documentary with President Olusegun Obasanjo. His latest book – Expensive Poverty – which details the failings of aid, and suggests several ways to improve development outcomes, is to be published by Pan Macmillan in October 2021.
John Matisonn is the author of Cyril’s Choices: Lessons from 25 years of freedom in South Africa, and God, Spies and Lies, Finding South Africa’s Future through its Past. He spent 19 months working for the United Nations in Afghanistan, as Chairperson of the Electoral Media Commission for the 2005 parliamentary and provincial council elections, in 2009 as International Adviser to the Electoral Media Commission he established, and in 2010 as Acting Project Manager of the UN’s Election Project. John was a Washington correspondent for six years and writes a weekly column on US politics for news24. He also presents a weekly TV programme, THE FORUM with John Matisonn, on Cape Town Television.
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