Speaking at the 4th Annual ACES Political Economy Summer School in Zanzibar, Professor Leonard Wantchekon shared the story of how the African School of Economics (ASE) grew from a small idea into a thriving Pan-African knowledge ecosystem. “Yesterday,” he began with humor, “I presented the troublemaker side of me. But today you’ll see the other side — not only thinking of an alternative to the status quo but doing something about it, and doing something as if the state doesn’t exist — that you are the only one that matters.”
He recalled his early motivation as a young academic: “When I started teaching in 1995, I was shocked about how few of us Africans we had in the profession.” Even more troubling to him was how “Africa was, to some degree, misrepresented — particularly in the political science literature — with very little response from the academic world on the continent, because the universities were mostly teaching factories.”
This realization, he said, was the beginning of his journey toward building an institution that would restore Africa’s agency in scholarship and development.
From a $5,000 Dream to a Continental Vision
“I wanted to do something about it,” he explained. “So first, I started very small. I set up a research center in 2004. Everybody thought it was crazy because I was a junior faculty. Why would you care? Just try to get by.”
But Wantchekon refused to settle for mediocrity. “I was not born that way,” he said. “So I decided to set up a research center. It was very small — with $5,000, because that’s all NYU had for me.” With this seed, he organized a summer school, identified promising research assistants, and together they applied for small grants — “We got Afrobarometer grants, $8,000,” he recounted. “Then we said, let’s use part of it to actually do the work.”
That center evolved into the Empirical Political Economy Research Center and, eventually, into a master’s program designed to “grow the pipeline of research assistants.” The experiment worked — many of the program’s early graduates are now faculty or researchers “at the African Development Bank, at NYU, in Europe, at the IMF and World Bank.”
By 2011, the idea had matured. “I turned this into a university — that’s how the African School of Economics was first announced.” When Princeton University later invited him to join their faculty, Wantchekon negotiated not for personal gain but for institutional vision: “They asked what it would take for me to move to Princeton. I said, pay for my university that I’m going to set up — and they did. I could have asked for double salary or 20,000 research assistants, but I said: no, a university — that’s it.”
The ASE Model: Research First, Learning Without Boundaries
When ASE officially opened in 2014, the mission was clear. “From the beginning, we don’t deserve second best,” Wantchekon said. “Particularly when it comes to the continent — we have to be at the frontier.”
He emphasized that research must drive learning: “The most important research in Africa has to be done in large part and owned by African scholars. The critical mass of talent needed to transform the continent has to happen here, on the continent.”
Unlike most universities that begin with undergraduate studies, ASE started with research-oriented master’s programs. “I started with master’s, moved to an undergraduate, now PhD,” he said. “Because I needed the institution to be research-driven right away.”
He created two master’s degrees — in Mathematics, Economics, and Statistics — intentionally mixing students from diverse backgrounds: “The student in math may have no economics knowledge; they thrive in math classes but struggle in economics. But by working as a group, they positively influence each other.”
The result was a powerful culture of collaboration and rigor. “From the first cohorts,” he said proudly, “we have students who are now faculty at New York University, Dartmouth, the World Bank, the IMF — because the curriculum was super innovative. Few classes, but math, math, and math — it doesn’t matter where you come from.”
Growth into a Pan-African Ecosystem
ASE has since expanded into multiple countries. “We started in Benin and now have campuses in Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, and Zanzibar,” he said. The university also connects to the African diaspora: “We have a joint degree master’s program with Hunter College to help improve diversity in admission programs.”
That partnership brought students from across continents — “I got students from Colombia, the Dominican Republic — they are ASE students,” he noted. “We even have non-African students — one from Wisconsin Madison who came, and now he’s a business professional in the U.S.”
This transnational reach, Wantchekon explained, is essential to ASE’s identity: a Pan-African, globally connected network advancing African knowledge production.
Expanding Frontiers: Arts, Athletics, and Innovation
Beyond research and economics, ASE integrates culture, art, and innovation. “Because of the centrality of culture and history in the program, when we opened ASE Nigeria, we created ASE Arts,” he said. The school organizes events with performers and writers “to build a community on campus that’s very knowledgeable and informed about Africa.”
The arts initiative is expanding rapidly: “We might, in fact, have a film studio in partnership with Nollywood in Nigeria so that we can vibrantly, continuously tell the African story.”
Then there is ASE Athletics. “I’m a massive football fan,” he laughed. “My mind is athletic.” The ASE Athletics hub in Madrid combines “data science and sports — we train students from sports academies in data science, communication, economics, and marketing.” The program, he revealed, is even negotiating to “run a stadium and sports academy in Port Harcourt, Nigeria.”
His newest project — the Princeton–ASE Research Hub — aims to expand into sciences and engineering. “We thought about setting up a Max Planck Institute model across a number of African countries,” he said. “Groups of 10 to 20 people in various disciplines dedicated to research at the highest level.”
These hubs will cover four core areas:
- Economics (macro, micro, and political economy)
- Science and Engineering (biotech, geoscience, climate change)
- Mathematics and Data Science (including AI)
- Arts, History, and Philosophy
The Future
In his closing remarks, Professor Wantchekon outlined an ambitious plan for ASE’s future. He described turning parts of the research hub into “startups — business- and research-driven innovation as part of ASE’s mission.”
One such project is the Agricultural Institute, which will merge “agriculture, biotech, culture, and history,” drawing inspiration from his hometown’s 1922 palm research center. Another is a “cultural space” — a highly digitized, interactive museum of African social history. “We will create a space,” he said, “where we can know, for instance, better about those societies two centuries ago and how they have evolved.”
Visitors will even be able to contribute to the data. “People can come in and say, ‘Oh, you forgot about my uncle.’ Then we can put him there and keep expanding the sample until we can recreate those societies across centuries.”
He envisions similar hubs in “Morocco, South Africa, Nigeria, and Zanzibar,” combining education, tourism, and innovation.
Finally, he announced two institutional initiatives: the Growth Advisory Unit and a Pipeline Program for Governance. “The Growth Advisory Unit will be a group of people who will have thought about possible solutions for issues in several countries and advise governments with hardcore analysis and data.” The Pipeline Program, meanwhile, will “train individuals in political economy and channel them into government, particularly local government, alongside scientists and engineers.”
To him, these programs embody a new model of African-led innovation and self-sustaining research. “We can help governments much cheaper,” he said. “We don’t need to be highly dependent on foundations. We can have an internal system of financing research — contributing to local development and human capital because it’s a relatively closed system of research funding and social impact.”
As he concluded, the vision was clear — a living, breathing African knowledge ecosystem built by Africans for the world. “From the beginning,” he reminded the audience, “we don’t deserve second best. We have to be at the frontier.”
