Dr Sipke Shaughnessy works on responsible investing at British International Investment (BII), the UK’s bilateral development finance institution, directly supporting investments on risk, impact, and sustainability across frontier and fragile markets, with a particular focus on Africa.
At the FLIA, his research examines hidden economies within Africa’s informal and grey sectors: patterns of trade, production, and exchange that often escape official statistics and financial modelling yet remain deeply entangled with formal systems. Explored through narrative vignettes on his Substack, Charting Hidden Economies, this work seeks to reframe how investors, development actors, and policymakers engage with informality, while also foregrounding the heterogeneity of economic forms, both within and beyond capitalism, that such economies represent. He holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Cambridge.
Research interests: informal and grey economies, development finance
Region of focus: East and Central Africa