Barbara Barungi

Barbara Barungi is the founder of IMARA AFRICA consulting, economic policy management and digital media and solutions firm that brings together world-class African expertise to provide advisory services across the African continent.

Barungi has over 20 years’ experience as an economist and development policy practitioner working on middle-income countries like South Africa, Nigeria as well as several other countries such as Rwanda, Uganda, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Liberia and Somalia.

She served in Rwanda as an advisor to the Minister of Finance and later joined the African Development Bank where she was the lead economist in Nigeria. While at the AFDB she was also instrumental in shaping the work on fragile states particularly in the areas of macroeconomic policy and public financial management. In Nigeria, she engaged closely with the government and development partners on the Economic Growth and Recovery Plan (2017-2020) as well as with several state governments on economic policy and PPP infrastructure development financing.

Ms Barungi also worked with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) between 2001 -2009, where she worked with various governments on the designing of poverty reduction strategies and social policies as part of government economic reform programmes. She has a sound understanding of the economic reform programmes supported by the IMF and World Bank in many African countries.

Barungi holds an Mphil. International Finance and a postgraduate diploma in development policy from Glasgow University, Scotland. She has a BA in Economics and Sociology from Makerere University, Uganda. She currently lives in Nigeria.