Kingsley Moghalu

Kingsley Chiedu Moghalu OON (born 7 May 1963) is a Nigerian political economist.

Moghalu was born in Lagos in 1963 to Isaac Moghalu, a Nigerian foreign service officer and Vidah Moghalu, a school teacher.

Moghalu spent his early childhood in Switzerland and Washington, DC, where his father was posted.

Isaac Moghalu transferred his service back to Nigeria's Eastern Region as the country was rocked by a political and humanitarian crisis, and the family returned to Nigeria in April 1967.

The Eastern Region announced its secession from Nigeria the following month of May, and Moghalu and his family lived in his hometown of Nnewi, as well as Umuahia, the capital of the short-lived Republic of Biafra, during the civil war that lasted for two and a half years.

In the 1970s Kingsley received his secondary school education at Eziama High School, Aba, Government College Umuahia, and Federal Government College Enugu.

He earned a degree in law from the University of Nigeria in 1986, and the Barrister at Law from the Nigerian Law School, Lagos.

Moghalu obtained a Master of Arts degree in 1992, at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, where he was the Joan Gillespie Fellow and a Research Assistant in the International Political Economy Program.

Moghalu joined the United Nations in 1992.

He served in political, legal, and external affairs assignments at duty stations in Cambodia, the United Nations headquarters in New York, Croatia, and Tanzania/ Rwanda.

His first assignment was as a UN human rights and elections officer with the United Nations Transitional Authority.

A year later, he was appointed political affairs officer in the department of peacekeeping operations at the UN Headquarters in New York.

From 1996 to 1997, he served in the former Yugoslavia as political advisor to the special representative of the UN Secretary-General in Croatia.

Kingsley was then assigned as legal adviser to the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (UNICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania, in 1997 and later promoted to the role of the international tribunal's spokesman.

As special counsel and spokesman, he was responsible for policy development, strategic planning and external relations.

The UNICTR delivered the first-ever judgement by an international court on genocide.

In 2002, Moghalu was appointed to the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, as head of global partnerships and resource mobilization at The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM), a public-private international development finance organization and social investment fund with $20 billion in assets and investments in 140 developing and middle-income countries.

He earned the International Certificate in Risk Management from the Institute of Risk Management (IRM) in London. Moghalu later obtained his Doctor of Philosophy degree in International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2005 with a thesis entitled "Justice as policy and strategy: A study of the tension between political and juridical responses to violations of international humanitarian law".

He received advanced executive education in macroeconomics and financial sector management, corporate governance, and global strategic leadership at the International Monetary Fund Institute, Columbia Business School, Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, Harvard Business School, and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

He was a member of the Global Fund's senior management group that set corporate strategy, a member of the risk management committee, and was promoted to the rank of director in 2006.

In 2006, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed Moghalu as a member of the UN General Assembly-mandated Redesign Panel on the United Nations Internal Justice System.

Working at the UN Headquarters in New York for six months in the first half of 2006, the Redesign Panel reviewed and made recommendations on how to improve the system of administration of justice at the United Nations.

Umaru Yar'Adua, President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (2007–2010), appointed Moghalu deputy governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria in November 2009.

Moghalu resigned from the United Nations in December 2008.

He then founded Sogato Strategies S.A., a global strategy and risk consultancy, in Geneva.

Moghalu was the deputy governor for Financial System Stability and supervised the execution of reforms in Nigeria's banking sector after the global financial crisis of 2008.

He also served as deputy governor for Operations, with supervisory responsibility for currency and branch operations, payment systems, and the management of Nigeria's foreign reserves of $37 billion.

He led the rollout of payment systems reforms, including the development and introduction of the unique identifier Bank Verification Number (BVN), that enabled the growth of a thriving Fintech industry.

Moghalu was a member of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), the Committee of Governors (CoG), and the Board of Directors of the CBN, and also served as a member and representative of the CBN in the Economic Management Team of president Goodluck Jonathan.

He served as the Chairman of the Boards of Directors of the Nigerian Export-Import Bank (NEXIM) and the Financial Institutions Training Centre, and as a member of the boards of the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the Kuala Lumpur-based Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI).

He also represented the CBN as a member of the Board Executive Committee of the International Islamic Liquidity Management Corporation, headquartered in Kuala Lumpur.

He served as Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, appointed by President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, from 2009 to 2014.

He subsequently taught at Tufts University as Professor of Practice in International Business and Public Policy at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy from 2015 to 2017.

The Governing Board of The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva, Switzerland appointed Kingsley Moghalu, in 2017, as a member of its high level Independent Expert Group on Financing for Development.

The Expert Group reviewed and made recommendations on how to better achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and effective domestic resource mobilization for development in developing countries.

He was the presidential candidate of the Young Progressive Party (YPP) in the country's general election in February 2019.

Moghalu is the founder of Sogato Strategies LLC, a global investment advisory firm, and the president of the Institute for Governance and Economic Transformation (IGET), a public policy think tank.

He is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Council on Emerging Market Enterprises at the Fletcher School at Tufts University and has served as the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Special Envoy on Post-Covid Development Finance for Africa.

He was the Oxford Martin Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford for the Michaelmas term in 2021

Moghalu is the chairman of the board of directors of the Africa Private Sector Summit (APSS) and is a member of the Advisory Council of the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF), a network of global asset management firms, sovereign wealth and pension funds.