Yselle Flora Malah-Kuete is a development economist and researcher at the University of Yaoundé II in Cameroon. She currently chairs the Gender Equality Thematic Panel of the Union for African Population Studies (UAPS). Her research focuses on economic transformation, trade, gender equity, labor markets, and education policy in Sub-Saharan Africa.
She has served as a consultant for several international organizations, including the World Bank, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), and the African Union, contributing to impactful analytical work and the design of inclusive development policies. She is co-author of several publications, including the books Topical Issues in International Development and Economics, Zone de libre-échange continentale et intégration régionale en Afrique, The Oxford Handbook of the Economy of Cameroon, and the Central Africa chapter of the African Union/OECD flagship report Africa’s Development Dynamics 2022: Regional Value Chains for a Sustainable Recovery.
As a former fellow of the Africa Fellows in Education Program (AFEP), she led pioneering research on the effects of linguistic distance between mother tongues and language of instruction on early literacy outcomes in Cameroon, where the findings are featured in the podcast.
Dr. Malah-Kuete has held visiting research positions at leading institutions such as the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), the Centre d’Études et de Recherches sur le Développement International (CERDI), the Research on Socio-Economic Policy (RESEP), and the Nordic Africa Institute (NAI). She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Dschang and has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals on African development issues.