Jörg Wiegratz

Jörg Wiegratz is Associate Professor in Global Political Economy and Development at the University of Leeds, School of Politics and International Studies, UK, and Senior Research Associate, Department of Sociology, University of Johannesburg, South Africa.He specialises in neoliberalism, fraud and anti-fraud measures, commercialisation, and economic pressure and related aspects of moral and political economy, in Uganda and Kenya. He worked in Uganda from 2004 to 2007, first for the UN Industrial Development Organization and then as researcher/consultant with funding from the government of Uganda (then Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Industry), European Union and German Agency for International Cooperation. He has been a resource person at Makerere University and a visiting scholar/research associate at the Economic Policy Research Centre, Kampala. Before joining the University of Leeds in 2012 he taught at the universities of Bath and Sheffield.

Jörg was briefings and debates editor of the Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE), and deputy editor of roape.net (2018-2022). He has published monographs (Uganda’s Human Resource Challenge: Training, Business Culture and Economic Development; Neoliberal Moral Economy: Capitalism, Socio-Cultural Change and Fraud in Uganda), collections (Neoliberalism and the moral economy of fraud; Uganda: The dynamics of neoliberal transformation; Economic Crime in Africa - The neoliberal period; Moral Economies of Distribution and Redistribution in Africa), journal articles (ROAPE, New Political Economy, Journal of Agrarian Change, Development and Change, Globalizations), and blog posts (Africa is a country/AIAC, Elephant, roape.net, Counterpunch, Truth out, Le Monde diplomatique, The Conversation, SPERI blog, Progress in Political Economy). He is the editor of the blog series Capitalism in Africa, and Economic trickery, fraud and crime in Africa (both run on roape.net), co-editor of a blog series on ‘Pressure in the city’ (developing economics.org), and was contributing editor to a blog and video project (coordinated by Mathare Social Justice Centre) on ‘Capitalism in my city’ (run on AIAC). His current research explores commercialisation of football in Kenya and Uganda, representations of Fintech in the African Press, and economic pressure in the city (Kenya).