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Speaker biographies

Dora Nkem Akunyili is the director general of Nigeria’s National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC). Since being appointed in 2001, Dr. Akunyili has led an aggressive and widely successful effort to crack down on counterfeit and substandard pharmaceutical drugs in that country. She is widely recognized as one of Africa’s foremost health reformers; in 2003, Transparency International awarded her one of its International Integrity Awards, and in 2005, Time magazine named her one of its eighteen "global health heroes." Other recognitions include the International Euro Market Award by the European Marketing Research Centre–Belgium (2003, 2005), the Total Quality Leadership Award by the African Institute for Democracy and Good Governance (2003), and the International Chamber of Commerce’s Special Award for Combating Economic Crime (2004). Prior to her appointment to NAFDAC, Dr. Akunyili was a senior lecturer and consultant pharmacologist in the College of Medicine of the University of Nigeria Nsukka.

Roger Bate is a resident fellow at AEI. He researches aid policy in Africa and the developing world, evaluating the performance and effectiveness of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the World Bank, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, NGOs, and other aid organizations and development policy initiatives. He writes extensively on topics such as endemic diseases in developing countries (malaria, HIV/AIDS); taxes and tariffs; water policy; and international environmental and health agreements. Mr. Bate’s writings have appeared in, among others, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and Economic Affairs, and he regularly contributes to AEI’s Environmental Policy Outlook and Health Policy Outlook series. In 2007–2008, Mr. Bate conducted extensive research in India, Thailand, and numerous African countries on the counterfeit drug trade. His findings will be published this spring in Making a Killing: The Deadly Implications of the Counterfeit Drug Trade (AEI Press, May 2008).

Thomas M. Woods is a senior associate fellow in African affairs at the Heritage Foundation. He also consults on a range of development, policy, and business facilitation concerns for the private sector. Prior to this, he was deputy assistant secretary of state for Africa, in which capacity he chaired the first Bilateral Conference on U.S.-Nigeria Energy Cooperation. He also led U.S. efforts to rebuild postconflict Liberia and restore democracy to Zimbabwe. Mr. Woods was the deputy assistant administrator for Africa at the U.S. Agency for International Development from 2002 to 2004, where he helped create global development alliances with major oil companies and oversaw the agency’s Africa development budget.

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