John Sinclair, born in the UK, has lived in Canada since 1974. After studying economics at Cambridge University, he has followed a career as an international development practitioner, mainly working for CIDA and the World Bank. For both these institutions, he was involved in strategic policy issues as well as leading country programs. With the World Bank he was active in shifting its agenda to a pro-poor focus, as well as working on effectiveness issues, including the Bank’s major decentralization process. He is a Senior Fellow at the University of Ottawa’s School of International Development and Global Studies. He was a Distinguished Associate of the North-South Institute, Canada’s principal development think-tank. He has worked as a consultant with the World Bank, AsDB, IFAD, UNICEF and the Ford Foundation. As a member of the McLeod Group, he is now a thinker/policy advocate on development issues, a role reinforced by writing in journals and newspapers.
His geographic focus is Africa and Asia. He has lived as a development professional in Sri Lanka, Egypt and most recently Indonesia. Major countries of involvement include India, China, Bangladesh, Nepal and Ghana.
His current thematic interests are global development architecture, G7/G20, development/aid effectiveness, post-Busan agendas, Agenda 2030/SDGs, evaluation, country programming/donor performance, results, LDCs/fragile states, emerging economies/BRICS, governance/corruption, institutional effectiveness, roles of CSOs/NGOs, inclusiveness and decentralization.