Dr. Luke has over thirty years’ substantive experience in trade policy, regional economic integration, and private sector response – from an extensive career at field, country, regional, and global levels; and in university teaching and research.
Dr. Luke is Coordinator of the African Trade Policy Centre at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, with the rank of a director at the Commission. He is responsible for leading ECA’s research, policy advisory services, training, and capacity development on inclusive trade policies and in particular the boosting intra-African trade and the continental free trade area initiatives. Dr. Luke’s portfolio also includes WTO, EPAs, Brexit, AGOA, Africa’s trade with emerging economies, and trade and cross-cutting policy areas such as trade, industrialization and structural transformation, trade and gender, trade and public health, and trade and climate change.
Prior to joining ECA in 2014, he served as UNDP trade policy adviser in Southern Africa and Geneva, as Senior Economist and Chief of Trade at the Organization for African Unity/African Union Commission, and as an Associate Professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada.