On 1 September, a lecturer from Oxford stood before faculty and students at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and argued that the story of who writes economic policy in poorer countries is missing a cast member. The NTU-SBF Centre for African Studies, which hosted the talk and published its own account on 29 September 2026, named the speaker as Dr Corentin Cohen, an Associate and Lecturer at the University of Oxford and editor of the Journal of Modern African Studies.
Standard accounts of global economic integration focus on three actors: states, multinational enterprises and international organizations. Dr Cohen’s talk, on the political and economic power of professional service firms in Africa and Latin America, put management consultancies and Big Four accounting firms into the frame. The work is a four-year project backed by a Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant under the EU Horizon programme, and it blends political economy, sociology and business studies.
An older story than the 1980s
The usual telling dates the spread of these firms across developing economies to the structural adjustment programmes of the 1980s. According to the Centre, Dr Cohen’s research argues they were brokers and intermediaries throughout the twentieth century. Opening up what he calls the “black box” of these organizations, he traces how they moved into new advisory fields and new regions. Several became caught up in high-profile corruption scandals and state capture, in countries such as Angola and South Africa.
Historical case studies in the talk showed the firms designing and carrying out development tools, among them state planning policy and institutional reshuffling, while building their own interests into the result. Those arrangements created fresh markets and contracts for the firms.
Special economic zones and privatisation
A paper he wrote with Professor Ronen Palan, also covered in the presentation, looked at special economic zones and privatisation programmes. The Centre said it found consultancies and accounting firms driving both, acting as brokers and as architects of institutions, with two lasting effects.
The first is convergence on the supply side. States did not pick reforms independently; they could choose from a menu of policy and institutional options the consultancies had produced. That, per the Centre’s summary, steered zone development across Puerto Rico, Mexico, Central America, Nigeria and Taiwan. Coopers & Lybrand, now PwC, set early global standards for privatisation and gained a dominant footprint across Latin America, Africa and the Middle East.
The second is influence “by design.” Consultancies shaped state policies and institutions to match what corporate partners and investors expected, which gave them lasting sway over state infrastructure and global economic governance and a steady flow of future advisory contracts.
The session drew questions from faculty members and from many students interested in the part that professional service firms and technical experts play in development. The Centre’s account gives no figures on the economic impact of the zones or privatisations it discusses.
