Regional economic/political unions are some of the most important organisations in our world today. We invite Fandi Achmad to discuss how unions like ASEAN, African Union, Mercosur, etc. can shape individual member states economically, politically, and socially. He is interviewed by marketing director Brandon Sambrano.

Fandi Achmad is a DPhil candidate in International Development at Oriel College, University of Oxford. He has over ten years of work experience covering issues of international trade and digital trade policies, competition policy, and financial inclusion. He held various positions in the past, including in the Executive Office of the President of Indonesia, where he monitored the country’s strategic issues on industrial and trade policies, and in the ASEAN Secretariat, where he ran regional programmes for the development of competition policy and law and served the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Working Group on competition negotiations between 2013-2016.

Fandi is currently a consultant for the St. Gallen Endowment for Prosperity Through Trade to monitor trade and commercial policy changes in ASEAN countries for the Global Trade Alert. He also recently engaged as a consultant for UNESCAP and OECD for a research project on digital trade regulatory restrictiveness in several Asian and African countries. Drawing from these experiences, his doctoral research seeks to investigate the channels on how digital trade affects digital technology diffusion in developing countries. He receives the Jardine Foundation Scholarship Award to sponsor his doctoral study.

Fandi holds a Bachelor in Economics Degree from Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia, a Master of Public Policy from the University of Michigan, USA, and a Master of Advanced Studies in Economics from KU Leuven, Belgium. He was also awarded as a Young Leaders for Indonesia by McKinsey & Co. in 2010.