Dr. Michael Kevane
Associate Professor of Economics, Santa Clara University; Founder and Director, Friends of African Village Libraries (FAVL)

Speaker

Professor Michael Kevane teaches courses on the Economics of Gender in Developing Countries, African Economic Development, and International Economics. He has published articles on the performance of rural institutions and markets in journals such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Environmental Research Letters, Review of Development Economics, World Development, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, and Africa. He is the author of Women and Development in Africa: How Gender Works (2nd edition 2014), and is also co-editor (with Endre Stiansen) of a book titled, Kordofan Invaded: Peripheral Incorporation and Sectoral Transformation in Islamic Africa.

He currently studies how access to books, libraries, and reading programs affect student performance, and he has published in the journals World Libraries, Libri and Bulletin des Bibliothèques de France. He has co-edited (with Alain Sissao and Félix Compaoré) a book, Promotion de la Lecture au Burkina Faso: Enjeux et Défis, and also authored the book Rural Community Libraries in Africa` (with Valeda Dent and Geoff Goodman). He also writes and gives talks on various aspects of the political economy of Sudan and Burkina Faso.  Professor Kevane is fluent in Spanish and French, and is well-versed in Sudanese colloquial Arabic. He is the founder and director of the non-profit organization Friends of African Village Libraries.