Prof Hiroyuki Hino: The economist who has studied Africa’s hardest questions for decades

When President William Ruto launched The National Conversation: Beyond 2030 at KICC on August 12, 2026, Hino was among the experts helping shape the discussion on Kenya’s next long-term development framework.

But this is not Hino’s first serious assignment in Kenya.

The Japanese economist previously served as an economic adviser to former Prime Minister Raila Odinga and later worked as a senior adviser on strategic initiatives and the economy to then-Deputy President William Ruto.

He is therefore returning to a country whose economic and political questions he has studied from close range.

From Rochester to the IMF

Hino studied at Sophia University in Japan before earning a doctorate in economics from the University of Rochester in the United States.

He joined the International Monetary Fund in 1975, beginning a career that took him through its Exchange and Trade Relations Department and African Department before he became Director of the IMF Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific in Tokyo.

That experience put him inside the machinery of international economic policy well before his later academic work on Africa.

Africa became the bigger question

Hino went on to become a professor of economics at Kobe University and a researcher associated with Japan's development cooperation institutions.

His research moved beyond economic growth alone. He examined how poverty, inequality, ethnic divisions and institutions interact to shape African economies.

His work on ethnic diversity and economic instability in Africa brought economists, political scientists, historians and anthropologists together to challenge simplistic explanations of the continent's development problems.

That research produced Ethnic Diversity and Economic Instability in Africa and later From Divided Pasts to Cohesive Futures.

The problem with simply having a job

Youth employment has been another recurring subject.

Hino co-edited Youth and Employment in Sub-Saharan Africa: Working but Poor, examining the millions of Africans who have work but remain trapped in low-productivity and poorly paid jobs.

That question has also featured in his Kenya-related work, particularly around human capital, industrialisation and employment opportunities for young people.

Hino's latest research

More recently, Hino has examined Africa's informal economy.

A 2024 study involving low-income microbusinesses in Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria challenged assumptions about informal entrepreneurs, finding that many possess significant educational qualifications and that some businesses perform better than conventional stereotypes suggest.

It is a useful clue to the way Hino approaches development:

Not simply from government offices or economic statistics, but by examining what happens to people and businesses at ground level.

Now comes Beyond 2030

Hino is currently associated with Duke University, alongside his long academic and development-policy career spanning Japan, Africa and international institutions.

His latest Kenyan assignment brings several strands of that career together.

The country is now asking what should follow Vision 2030.

The questions on the table - jobs, inequality, productivity, economic opportunity and social cohesion - are remarkably close to the subjects Hino has spent decades researching.

For him, Beyond 2030 is a new assignment. The questions are not.