Country Intelligence Webcast

Ronel Oberholzer

Principal Economist, IHS Global Insight

Bryan Plamondon

Senior Manager, MENA Economics

Plamondon is Senior Manager for Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Economics in the Country Intelligence Group, responsible for overseeing the macroeconomic analyses and forecasts of the 20 countries included in the MENA region. He has a particular focus on Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Israel. He has more than 10 years' experience in analyzing and forecasting emerging markets and holds a MS in International Economics from Suffolk University in Boston.

Karanta Kalley

Director, Sub-Saharan Africa Economics

Mr. Kalley is responsible for coordinating macroeconomic forecasts and risk analysis for countries in sub-Saharan Africa. He authors the Overview of the quarterly forecast and contributes to the World Economic Executive Summary—an analysis of the world economic outlook, policy trends, and key issues facing the global economy. Kalley has over 15 years of experience as a professional economist in business/macroeconomic forecasting, consulting, and teaching. He has detailed knowledge of economic methods and development macroeconomics, as well as a good knowledge of applied econometrics and global issues.

Prior to joining IHS Global Insight, Kalley taught macroeconomics at Florida International University, did macroeconomic forecasting for the finance department of the city of Philadelphia, and did econometric modelling for Glo-Chem, an international marketing research company. Karanta also currently serves as an adjunct professor of economics at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

He received his M.A. degree at the State University of New York, and did his doctoral work at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University.

Mark Bohlund

Senior Economist

Mark is a member of the IHS Sub-Saharan Africa macroeconomics team and specializes most notably in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Ethiopia.

An experienced emerging market economist, Mark is responsible for the IHS forecasts, sovereign risk assessments and economic commentary.

Thea Fourie

Senior Economist

Thea is responsible for analysing and forecasting economic developments in Mozambique, Madagascar, Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Seychelles. She is also responsible for sovereign risk analysis and the day-to-day economic coverage of these economies. Prior to joining IHS Global Insight, Fourie was a financial economist at ING Barings, BOE NatWest Securities, and ABSA Bank, specializing in macro and financial economic analysis of the South African economy. Her expertise also includes macroeconometric modelling and macroeconomic analysis.

Fourie holds a B.Econ (Hons.) degree from the University of Pretoria and is fluent in both Afrikaans and English. With 15 years of experience in the financial and consulting industry, she is an expert in analysing strategically important economies in the sub-Saharan region.

Ama Baidu-Forson

Economist

Bio coming soon.