Taro Boel is currently an Associate Economic Affairs Officer working in the Commodities Branch, Division on International Trade and Commodities of UNCTAD.
He has been involved in a project designed to foster local content in the oil and mining sector through developing linkages between the Transnational companies and the local private sector especially in Angola, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, and the Republic of Congo. He has also conducted research on the access of smallholder farmers to the international markets (UNCTAD Commodities and Development Report 2015) as well as the contribution of diamonds revenues to economic development in Botswana and Sierra Leone (UNCTAD Commodities and Development Report 2017).
Previously, he worked for the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) based in Addis Ababa (2008-2012). During this period, he contributed to many substantive reports, including the Economic Report on Africa 2009 “Developing African Agriculture Through Regional Value Chains”, the “Sustainable Development Report on Africa” and the Seventh African Development Forum on Climate Change. He penned and presented a paper titled “risk management strategies and labour productivity in rural Africa” at the Center for the Study of African Economies (CSAE) located at Oxford University in the United Kingdom.
He graduated in development economics from the “Université d’Auvergne” in France and successfully passed the National Competitive Examination (NCE) of the United Nations while he was an external collaborator with the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Geneva.
