Todd Moss

Senior Fellow

Expertise:

Africa, energy, development finance, cash transfers, US-Africa relations

Education:

PhD and MSc University of London, BA Tufts University

Todd Moss is senior fellow at the Center for Global Development where his research focuses on US-Africa relations, energy policy, and private investment. Moss is also a nonresident scholar at the Center for Energy Studies at Rice University’s Baker Institute and an adjunct professor at Georgetown. He served as COO/VP at the Center from 2009-2016. Moss is currently working on electrification in Africa, cash transfers in new oil economies, and ideas for upgrading US development finance tools. In the past he led CGD’s work on Nigerian debt, reconstruction in Zimbabwe, the future of the World Bank’s soft loan IDA, and the African Development Bank.

Moss served as Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of African Affairs at the U.S. Department of State 2007-2008 while on leave from CGD. Previously, he has been a Lecturer at the London School of Economics (LSE) and worked at the World Bank, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and the Overseas Development Council. Moss is the author of numerous articles and books, including African Development: Making Sense of the Issues and Actors (2011) and Oil to Cash: Fighting the Resource Curse with Cash Transfers (2015).

Moss also writes an international thriller series for Penguin’s Putnam Books about a State Department crisis manager including The Golden Hour (2014), Minute Zero (2015), Ghosts of Havana (2016), and The Shadow List (forthcoming 2017).

Show Non-CGD Publications

Books

African Development: Making Sense of the Issues and Actors, Lynne Rienner, 2007.
African Emerging Markets, Contemporary Issues, Vol II, (edited with Sam Mensah), African Capital Markets Forum, Accra, 2004.
Adventure Capitalism: Globalization and the Political Economy of Stock Markets in Africa, Palgrave MacMillan, 2003.

Policy Reports:

Strategic Framework for Assistance to Africa: IDA and the Emerging Partnership Model, with Alan Gelb, et al, Africa Region, World Bank, Washington DC, January 2004.
The Other Costs of High Debt in Poor Countries: Growth, Policy Dynamics, and Institutions, (PDF, 211.44KB) with Hanley S. Chiang, World Bank, HIPC Unit, August 2003.
The Partnership Imperative: Maintaining American Leadership in a New Era, with Catherine Gwin et al, Overseas Department Council, Washington DC, 1997.

Selected Journals/Chapters

“An Aid-Institutions Paradox? Aid dependency and state building in sub-Saharan Africa,” with Nicolas van de Walle and Gunilla Pettersson, in William Easterly (ed.) Reinventing Aid, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2008.
“The Ghost of 0.7%: Origins and Relevance of the International Aid Target,” with Michael Clemens, International Journal of Development Issues, Vol. 6, No. 1, 2007.
“Zimbabwe’s Meltdown: Anatomy of a Peacetime Economic Collapse,” The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, Vol. 31, No. 2, Summer 2007.
“The Trouble with the MDGs: Confronting Expectations of Aid and Development Success,” with Michael Clemens and Charles Kenny, World Development, Vol. 35, No. 5, May 2007.
“Briefing: The G8’s Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative and Poverty Reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa”, African Affairs, Vol. 105, No. 419, April 2006.
“After Mugabe: Applying Post-Conflict Recovery Lessons to Zimbabwe” (PDF, 211KB); Africa Policy Journal, Harvard University, Spring 2006, V.I.
“Compassionate Conservatives of Conservative Compassionates? US political parties and bilateral foreign assistance to Africa”, with Markus Goldstein, Journal of Development Studies, Vol. 24, No. 1, October 2005.
“Is Africa’s Skepticism of Foreign Capital Justified? Preliminary Evidence from Firm Survey Data in East Africa”, with Vijaya Ramachandran and Manju Kedia Shah, in Magnus Blomstrom, Edward Graham, and Theodore Moran (eds), Does a Foreign Direct Investment Promote Development?, Institute of International Economics, Washington DC, May 2005.
“Is Wealthier Really Healthier?” Foreign Policy, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC, March/April 2005.
“Current issues in development assistance to Sub-Saharan Africa”, Sub-Saharan Africa Regional Forecast, Economist Intelligence Unit, London, February 2005.
“Africa and the Battle over Agricultural Protectionism” (PDF, 329.86KB), with Alicia Bannon, World Policy Journal, New York, Vol. XXI, No. 2, Summer 2004.
“Irrational Exuberance or Financial Foresight? The Political Logic of Stock Markets in Africa”, in Sam Mensah & Todd Moss (eds), African Emerging Markets: Contemporary Issues, Volume II, African Capital Markets Forum, Accra, 2004.
“Stock Markets in Africa: Emerging Lions or White Elephants?” with Charles Kenny, World Development, Vol. 26, No. 5, May 1998.
“Africa Policy Adrift,” with David Gordon, Mediterranean Quarterly, Vol. 7, No. 3, Summer 1996.
“US Policy and Democratisation in Africa: The Limits of Liberal Universalism,” The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 33, No. 2, June 1995.