Gaetan Tchakounte Nandong, a former ASE student (Class of 2016), has been accepted to one of the world’s top-ranked universities to pursue a PhD in politics. At Princeton, he will join ASE President and Princeton professor Leonard Wantchekon, who serves on the faculty of the politics and economics departments at the university.  According to Professor Wantchekon, “Gaetan’s admission to Princeton is a clear signal of the growing international reputation of the African School of Economics and talent of our students. There is much more to come”.

Gaetan came to ASE from Yaoundé, Cameroon, and graduated from ASE in December. He acquired extensive experience conducting research during his time at ASE and recently presented his master’s thesis on healthcare delivery in Cameroon at the Working Group in African Political Economy’s 2017 conference in Abu Dhabi. Gaetan was already one of the most high-achieving students in his class, ranking near the very top in GPA. In ASE’s pre-doctoral fellows program for top ASE graduates, he prepared for the GRE and TOEFL exams and wrote his applications to PhD programs in the US and Canada.

For his doctoral dissertation, Gaetan is interested in continuing his research project on ethnicity and entrepreneurial attitudes, noting that there are some ethnic groups throughout Africa that are more likely to be entrepreneurs, such as the Chaga in Tanzania, Mossi in Burkina Faso or Igbo in Nigeria. Once he has completed his PhD, he hopes to work as a professor at a major research university.