Tesfachew is currently Senior Advisor on Economic Transformation in Africa at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI).
Prior to assuming his present position, Tesfachew was the Managing Director of the UN Technology Bank for Least Developed Countries (LDCs), based in Türkiye, and before that Director of the Division for Africa and LDCs at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development Organization (UNCTAD), where he was responsible for the organization’s policy and capacity-building-related support to 89 developing countries, including African, Landlocked and Small Island economies. In this capacity, Tesfachew was responsible for preparation of two major annual reports namely, the Economic Development in Africa Report and The Least Developed Countries Report.
He has over 35 years of work experience in national and international development issues focusing mainly on trade, investment, industrial and technology policies and their interface with trade policies. In 2018, Tesfachew was appointed, by the Secretary General of United Nations as a member of the UN Committee for Development Policy and, more recently, to the Governing Board of the UN Technology Bank for the LDCs. He is also a member of the AfCFTA’s Trade and Industrial Development Advisory Council. In 2023, he was appointed as Adjunct Professor at the Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance, University of Cape Town, South Africa.
Tesfachew holds a BA and MA in Economics from the University of Lancaster and an MPhil and a PhD in Economics from the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK. He has authored and co-authored on a range of topics.