Ronak Gopaldas

Ronak Gopaldas is a political economist, “pracademic,” writer and speaker whose work focuses on the intersection of geopolitics, economics and business in Africa.

He is a Director at Signal Risk, a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and faculty at GIBS Business School in South Africa. Previously, he was Head of Country Risk at Rand Merchant Bank, where he worked for nearly a decade.

Ronak was also a long-standing Research Fellow at the Centre for African Studies at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore. He has held several advisory roles, including with the Norway-Africa Business Association and, previously, the Institute for Security Studies’ ENACT programme on transnational organised crime in Africa.

A prominent voice in local and international media, Ronak has appeared on CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera and CNBC Africa, and regularly publishes commentary and analysis. He has spoken at leading policy and business conferences and universities around the world as a keynote speaker, panellist and moderator. In 2016, he delivered a TEDx Talk on Africa’s evolving role in the global economy.

Ronak was named a Global South African Brand Ambassador in 2024 and is a 2019 Archbishop Desmond Tutu Leadership Fellow, a 2015 Asian Forum on Global Governance (Raisina Young Fellow) alumnus, and an alumnus of the Young African Leadership Initiative (YALI).

He holds a BCom in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) with Business French and a BCom (Hons) in Financial Analysis and Portfolio Management from the University of Cape Town. He also holds an MSc in Finance (Economic Policy) from SOAS University of London.