Development Practice Q&A: Osaretin Olurotimi MPA-DP ’13

Known as Osas among her colleagues, Osaretin Osarenren Olurotimi MPA-DP ’13 has big plans for helping broaden the economic landscape of sub-Saharan Africa, and is taking small but calculated steps to achieve them. Bringing economic expertise and an entrepreneurial spirit to her native Nigeria, Osas spoke with current student Sarayu Adeni MPA-DP ’15 about her new ventures — which now also include motherhood.

You’ve had an eventful year since graduation, including launching a research and consulting firm, Grey Nile Consulting, that offers sustainable development expertise to multiple sectors towards improving life in sub-Saharan Africa. How’s your progress?

I just resumed work in January since graduation because of a parental break. The firm is still in its infancy — just like my baby — and right now I am the only staff. Currently, I spend my days conducting research and carefully defining the organizational characteristics. The next phase will be to create products and undertake the necessary legal steps to incorporate the company in Nigeria.

My goal for the firm is that it will grow to be the leader in research-based advisory services on development issues in Nigeria and eventually sub-Saharan Africa. By conventional career trajectories, I may not have adequate work experience to be starting a firm with such lofty goals. However, I am on the cusp of something great, and the fact that I have so much to learn excites me because learning is one of my favorite activities.

How will your firm address Nigeria’s specific economic needs?

The biggest need for finance is for poor people and small-scale entrepreneurs, who are currently excluded from the financial system due to the high legal requirement to operate an account and even stiffer loan conditions.

Before I attended SIPA, I had worked as a portfolio risk manager in Guaranty Trust Bank, one of the biggest and most respected commercial banks in Nigeria. It exposed me to the limitation of monetary policy in development. For example, agricultural finance guaranteed by the central bank rarely reached small farmers, but went to the big and established farms. However, banks could report that they had met a mandated quota of guaranteed agricultural financing, regardless of the size or state of the farmers receiving it.

I also worked as an economic analyst at an economic research and consulting firm, where we provided analysis of economic facts to key decision makers. The information enabled to them deal with unforeseen events and leverage on opportunities available at the sectorial, national or global levels. The firm’s focus was mostly macroeconomics and monetary economics, which provided me with a strong economic base from which to explore development.

The firm I am setting up, in the spirit of the MPA-DP program, extends beyond these economic fields to incorporate thinking and expertise in other sectors. We will offer expertise in research, sustainability strategy, monitoring and evaluation, governance, economic development and sustainability, especially for corporations in the extractive industries.

Development practice and consulting is definitely a budding field in Nigeria. I constantly find myself explaining what development consultancy means, as most people are used to the traditional management consultancy firms.

Looking back, why did you choose the MPA-DP program? Did you have a favorite class?

I loved that the MPA-DP program offered me, an economics and research enthusiast, the chance to take core economics and statistics classes with courses in other sectors such as health, agriculture, energy, and governance. I liked the integrated and practical approach to solving development challenges that was promoted, and the international diversity of the students. I was sold by the pictures and stories of MPA-DP students from their internships offered on the website!

It’s hard to choose a favorite class because some classes were great on content, some were great on delivery, and some were great because they were so challenging. One of my favorites was an elective called Advanced Economics for Development. The class was challenging because it was quite heavy in mathematical proofs, statistics, and STATA programming. By the end of the class, I had learned how to write STATA codes quite well.

How can current MPA-DP students maximize their utility during their summer field placements?

I would advise obtaining clarity from all stakeholders as to what the deliverable will be. Secondly, language skills are important to develop beforehand if you are going to a country where you do not speak the language. Finally, do as much research as you can before heading out. It will help you identify what’s already been done and what the gaps are. Both are useful in avoiding duplication of effort and being effective.

As a Nigerian SIPA student, what was it like for you to discover other country contexts – and even the African continent – from a global perspective?

I served as the co-chair for communications for the SIPA Pan African Network. The most interesting aspect of my involvement with SPAN was collaborating with other pan-African student groups to organize Columbia University’s African Economic Forum hosted by the Business School, and the African Diplomatic Forum at SIPA. During the 2012 African Economic Forum I managed a panel on energy, while at the 2012 African Diplomatic Forum I managed and facilitated a panel titled Maximizing Africa’s Economic Advantages: Trade and FDI For Development. I was responsible for defining the direction of the panels and securing knowledgeable speakers.

My summer fieldwork was in Chile. Alongside Carolina Ocampo, I worked with Teck Mining at its Carmen de Andacollo mine to conduct a sustainable development synopsis of Andacollo, a mining community of about 10,000 people. The most striking thing about my internship was my experience of how it felt to be an outsider. It was my first time in Latin America, and Chile was my first taste of a country where virtually everybody looked different from me and spoke a different single language. On a lighter note, I couldn’t find a relaxer in all of Chile as the women there had soft hair!

The experience reinforced the value of compassion to strangers and I learned that despite cultural and physical differences, humanity is mostly the same. SIPA taught me to think about big issues and the interconnectedness of everything, so systemic and integrated thinking is an approach I am currently applying.

— Sarayu Adeni MPA-DP ’15

Learn more about Columbia SIPA’s MPA in Development Practice.