I work at the intersection of AI policy, state capacity, and development economics at the International Growth Centre, based at LSE. My focus is on how governments in low- and middle-income countries can make better policy decisions.

I’m building IGC’s AI and data policy team, where I lead a team of economists and AI engineers working across projects in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Before this, I spent nearly four years building and running IGC’s Zambia programme, working directly with President, Cabinet, the Ministry of Finance, and line ministries to support policy change.

I have also worked on policy reforms in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uganda, and Rwanda; written regular op-eds on the economy for major national newspapers in Pakistan; and spent a brief stint teaching economics at a university in Islamabad, where I was born and raised.

I’m broadly interested in state capacity, the political economy of reform, and what it takes to scale good ideas in the public sector.