Dr Nicholas Charalambides is an international trade economist and Director at Imani Development. Based in our Cape Town office, Nick serves as the Technical Director responsible for all trade facilitation, private sector development, economic growth, and regional integration related projects in Southern and Eastern Africa.
His involvement with regional integration in Africa dates back to the mid-1980s when Imani was involved in the early stages of development for SADC and COMESA. In 1998, Nick was part of the team contracted to provide support in economic integration to the East African Cooperation Secretariat as it prepared to launch the revived East African Community (EAC). More recently, he helped develop SADC’s Development Vision 2050 and worked on Non-Tariff Barriers (NTBs) for the EAC.
As a senior trade and regional integration expert, Nick has played a significant role in promoting Africa’s trade agenda, having facilitated in the design of a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system for the SADC-EU Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) and recently developing statutes for the AfCFTA Adjustment Facility.
Following his Doctorate in Quantitative Economics from the Centre of the Study of African Economies, Oxford University, he worked for DfID on globalisation and poverty, seconded to the European Commission as trade and poverty adviser for the Everything But Arts initiative and the Economic Partnership Agreements. He has worked extensively with COMESA, the EAC, SADC, SACU and a wide range of governments and non-state actors. Nick holds a Doctorate in Economics from Oxford University and an LLM in International Business Law from University of Liverpool.