biography

Dr Folashadé Soulé is senior Research Associate at the Global Economic Governance programme at the Blavatnik School of Government, where she is the co-principal investigator of the 'Negotiating Africa’s digital partnerships' policy research project.

Her research areas focuses on Africa-China relations, the study of agency in Africa’s international relations and the politics of South-South cooperation. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the London School of Economics, and a former Oxford-Princeton Global Leaders Fellow. Her research has been published in several peer-review journals among which African Affairs, Global Governance and Foro Internacional.

Folashadé also teaches as a guest lecturer in politics and international relations at the University of Oxford (Department of Politics and International Relations, Oxford School of Global and Area Studies) and has been an adjunct lecturer at the University of Lille and at Sciences Po Paris where she taught courses on Africa and Global Politics, the Politics of Globalization and International Political Economy.

As a policy-facing academic, connecting policy and research, she is the initiator of the Africa-China negotiation workshop series bringing together African negotiators and senior policymakers to exchange and build better negotiation practices when dealing with China. She has also acted as a policy analyst and consultant for several institutions and is currently acting as the Africa advisor to the Commission on Global Economic Transformation (CGET) led by Nobel Laureates Joseph Stiglitz and Michael Spence and hosted by the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET).

Publications

Latest publications

Navigating Africa’s digital partnerships in a context of global rivalry ‘, CIGI policy brief n°180, October 2023

What a U.S.-DRC-Zambia Electric Vehicle Batteries Deal Reveals About the New U.S. Approach Toward Africa’, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Africa program, Article, August 2023

Co-editor special issue: Décentrer l’analyse des relations afro-chinoises, Revue Internationale des Etudes du Développement, 252, 2023/2

Introduction : Décentrer l’analyse des relations afro-chinoises. Quelle agencéité africaine ?’ in Pairault, Soulé, Zhou (eds), Décentrer l’analyse des relations afro-chinoises, Revue Internationale des Etudes du Développement, 252, 2023/2

'Negotiating local business practices with China in Benin', Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, China Local Global Paper, April 2022

'Africa can use great power rivalry to its benefit: Here is how', The Conversation, January 2022

'Mapping the Future of Africa–China Relations: Insights from West Africa' - SAIIA (South African Institute of International Affairs) Occasional Paper, n°330, October 2021

'"Africa+1" summit diplomacy and the ‘new scramble’ narrative: Recentering African agency', African Affairs, volume 119, Issue 477, October 2020, pp. 633–646

'How popular is China in Africa? New survey sheds light on what ordinary people think', The Conversation, November 2020

'Tips for African Negotiators Doing Deals with China: Rebalancing Asymmetries', Natural Resource Governance Initiative (NRGI) blog post, February 2020