cokafor@g.harvard.edu

I am a third-year Harvard PhD candidate, Graduate Prize Fellow, Karl Deutsch Fellow, and 2025-26 Weatherhead Center Graduate Student Associate. My research lies at the intersection of comparative political economy, development economics, and economic history. Specifically, I quantitatively explore how the social and institutional legacies of pre-colonial (and colonial) episodes continue to shape contemporary political and economic development outcomes in West Africa. My dissertation explores this in the context of traditionally age and kinship-based societies as well as ranked societies, and the ways through which the existing normative order interacts with majoritarian democratic values and necessitates a reevaluation of appropriate political and economic policy.