National Development Planning Commission
Dr. Eric Akobeng, the Director-General of the NDPC is an Economist and Development Policy Expert with over 26 years of experience in macroeconomic policy, development economics, development planning, micro-econometrics, budgeting, social protection, decentralization, M&E, local economic development, and sustainable development. He is a member of the Ghana Statistical Advisory Committee. He chairs the Governance, Democracy, Judicial and Crime Statistics & National, Regional, and Global Policy Statistics Working Groups of the National Statistical Advisory Committee of the Ghana Statistical Service.
Dr. Akobeng worked as the Chief of Section (P5) of Development Planning and Economic Affairs at the Macroeconomics and Governance Division (MGD), United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia). He completed the UNECA’s appointment with a performance evaluation above expectations. At UNECA, he worked with the UNDP, AUC, and AfDB on the Africa Sustainable Development Report and the Integrated Development Planning Guide for Africa. He led UN Missions to Burkina Faso, The Gambia, Botswana, Cote D’Ivoire, Malawi, and Zimbabwe to help align their National Development Plans with the SDGs (2030 Agenda) and the AU Agenda 2063 using the UNECA’s Integrated Planning and Reporting Toolkit. He made presentations on the Integrated Planning and Reporting Toolkit at the meetings of Africa’s First Time Voluntary National Review, UN Country Teams, and the National Focal Persons of Small Island Developing States.
He has served as an International Consultant to the UNDP and UN-OHRLLS on the preparation of the 2022 Africa Sustainable Development Report, and the Guidelines for the mainstreaming of the Doha Programmme of Action for the decade 2022 to 2031 (DPoA) into National Development Plans of LDCs, respectively. He served as the resource person (International Consultant) in collaboration with UN Resident Coordinators to deliver training on mainstreaming and monitoring the implementation of the DPoA held in Istanbul, Turkey for 44 Least Developed Countries (LDCs) in 2024. He served as a UNDP/ECOWAS International Consultant (Macroeconomic Expert) to write the Macroeconomic Section of the Regional Resilience Strategy (2024-2050) for West Africa which the ECOWAS Ministerial Committee adopted in November 2024.
Dr. Akobeng worked with the Ghana Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning and the Local Government Service and rose through the ranks to become Chief Budget Analyst (Director) from 1999 to 2020, and District Coordinating Director from 2020. He coordinated the World Bank's Village Infrastructure/Community-Based Rural Development and the African Development Bank's Urban Poverty Reduction Projects. He coordinated the ILO's Decent Work Country Programme, the Global Fund’s Roll Back Malaria Programme, and the UNFPA/Ghana Population Council's Africa Youth Alliance Project. He served as the Monitoring and Evaluation Focal Person for the Ghana AIDS Commission and was adjudged the Best District Monitoring and Evaluation Focal Person by the Ghana AIDS Commission for his outstanding work in monitoring and strategic plan preparation.
Dr Akobeng obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics from the Universities of Ghana (Legon) and Manchester in the UK, respectively. He received his PhD in Economics from the University of Leicester in the UK. Three papers of his PhD thesis were published before his doctoral defense. It was no mean achievement for a doctoral degree candidate to finish a PhD with three papers in the thesis published. While pursuing his PhD, Dr. Akobeng won the Unitemp of the Year Award 2015 for Outstanding Teaching at the University of Leicester as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in Economics. He also received the Leicester Award under the UK Higher Education Achievement Report in 2015 at the University of Leicester in the UK. He has published in internationally recognized peer-reviewed journals including Oxford Development Studies, Journal of Economic Studies, the Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Journal of Economic Policy Reform, South African Journal of Economics, African Development Review, Telecommunication Policy, and International Journal of Social Economics. He has made expert comments on economic development in Africa in the media landscape. He taught Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, and Econometrics at the University of Ghana. He has a lecturing affiliation with the University of Lancaster (Ghana campus).
He has facilitated expert group meetings, including the validation workshop on the Regional Resilience Strategy for West Africa in Abuja, the validation workshop on the Evaluation of the First Ten Year Implementation Plan, and the formulation of Second Ten Year Implementation Plan of the AU Agenda 2063 in Nairobi, UNCTAD Regional Workshop on Enterprise Sustainability and SDG Reporting in Cameroun, UNECA Annual and Fourth Quarter Accountability and Programme Performance Review in Addis Ababa, UNDESA Regional Ecosystem Approach to strengthening the effectiveness of international development cooperation, Data and Policy Analysis Tools workshop for Africa’s First-time VNR Countries, and the 24th SRO–WA Intergovernmental Committee of Senior Officials and Experts (ICE).
He has presented research papers at international conferences and seminars at institutions, including the Ethiopian Economic Association Conference in Addis Ababa, the 42nd Annual Conference of Eastern Economic Association in Washington D.C. (U.S.A), and the Econometric Society’s Latin American Workshop in Economic Theory (Mexico). He has also presented papers at the University of Leicester (UK), University of Northampton Business School (UK), University of Wolverhampton Business School (UK), Lancaster University Ghana, Nottingham University Economics Department in Ningbo (China), and the National Institute of Rural Development in Hyderabad (India).
#13 Switchback Road,
P. O. Box CT 633,
Cantonments, Accra - Ghana
Digital Address | GA-147-0671
Monday -Friday : 8am - 5pm
The National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) was established under Articles 86 and 87 of the 1992 Constitution as part of the Executive.