Meet Professor Kaplinsky

Production team

Raphael Kaplinsky is a Professor of International Development at the Department of Development Policy and Practice (DPP) of The Open University. Born and raised in South Africa, he came to the UK as a political refugee in 1969. Before joining the OU, he worked at The University of Sussex and in Kenya (1974-1978). Raphael played the lead role in the development of the Global Asian Drivers Programme that looks at the impact of dynamic Asian economies e.g. China and India on the developing world, focusing particularly on sub-Saharan Africa.

Raphael has authored numerous books and academic papers on technology, industrialisation, and globalisation. He has worked with enterprises, government departments and other organisations in Japan, the USA, Western and Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa,, the Caribbean and Central America, Brazil, and South and Central Asia. He has also participated in numerous UN and EU Missions, providing advice to countries on industrial and technology policies. Between 1991 and 2003 he worked intensively with the South African government on Industrial Policy, and was deeply involved in industrial strategy development in the post-Apartheid era.

He has initiated and managed global research programmes on a range of topics, most recently on global value chains and the Asian Drivers. Between 1998 and 2003 he was the research manager of an integrated and globally networked programme of research on Spreading the Gains from Globalisation undertaken by the Institute of Development Studies at The University of Sussex.

In 2005 he published a book (Globalization, Poverty and Inequality) on the generalised consequence of globalisation, and how the very workings of the global system condemn many - particularly those living in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and Eastern Europe - to poverty. This book has also been translated into Chinese.

The 2008 Open University Lecture