Ken Opalo is an Assistant Professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. His research interests include legislative politics, subnational administration and local government, electoral politics, and the political economy of development in Africa. His first book, titled Legislative Development in Africa: Politics and Post-Colonial Legacies (Cambridge University Press, 2019), explores how the adaptation of inherited colonial legislative institutional forms and practices continue to structure and influence contemporary politics and policy outcomes in Africa. Opalo’s current research projects include studies of the politics of service provision and accountability under devolved government in Kenya, and education sector reforms in Tanzania. His works have been published in the British Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Democracy, the Journal of Eastern African Studies, and Governance. He is a member of EGAP (Evidence in Governance and Politics), gui2de (Georgetown University Initiative on Innovation, Development, and Evaluation) and a non-resident fellow at Brookings Institution. His research has been funded by the Luminate Group, the Susan Ford Dorsey Fellowship, and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID). Opalo earned his BA from Yale University and PhD from Stanford University.
