Our Faculty
Dr. Pali Lehohla
Dr. Pali Lehohla is the former Statistician-General of South Africa and former Head of Statistics South Africa from 2000–2017. Since leaving office, Pali consults on research, strategy and statistical development and statistical programmes especially those related to censuses. Dr Lehohla held a number of positions during his tenure as Statistician-General. He served as Co-Chair of PARIS21 and as Chair of the UN Statistics Commission. He was the founding chair of the Statistics Commission of Africa (StatCom Africa) and chaired the African Symposium for Statistical Development (ASSD).
He was the Vice President of the International Statistics Institute (ISI) and a sponsor of the Young African Statistician (YAS) movement. He has served on the Independent Expert Advisory Group advising the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon on data revolution. He remains on the Independent Advisory Panel (IAP) to the UN Secretary General on the health of mothers, adolescents and children.
Dr. Asghar Adelzadeh
Dr. Asghar Adelzadeh is Director and Chief Economic Modeler at Applied Development Research Solutions (ADRS). In his over thirty years of experience in economic modeling, he has built large scale economic models with user-friendly web interfaces to allow policymakers and analysts to design and assess the impact of policy choices and produce projections. He has built ADRS’ macro, micro and provincial economic models of South Africa that are available on ADRS website. He built ADRS Online Country Economic Analysis System that includes economic models for 65 countries.
As Project Director at UNU-WIDER, Adelzadeh directed a major project on economic modeling for 10 African countries. He served as Senior Policy Advisor at UNDP South Africa, Senior Economic Modeler and Research Director at the National Institute for Economic Policy (NIEP), and senior lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand. Adelzadeh was the principal author and coordinator of the South African Human Development Report 2003 and has written extensively on macroeconomic, monetary, and fiscal policy issues, poverty eradication, employment creation and economic modeling.
Prof. Julian D. May
Julian May is the Director of the DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Food Security at the University of the Western Cape and holds the UNESCO Chair in African Food Systems. He is an economist and has worked on options for poverty reduction including public nutrition, land reform, social grants, information and communication technologies and food system governance.
He has published extensively, and has served on international and national expert groups, including the South African Statistics Council, the Council of the Academy of Science of South Africa, and currently, the third National Planning Commission.