Trudi Makhaya
South Africa-at-Large, 2002
MSc in Economics for Development
St Antony's College
Currently Project Officer in Marketing at AngloGold Ashanti (formerly AngloGold)
I matriculated from St. Barnabas College in 1996. My favourite high school achievement was becoming a Top 10 finalist in the National English Olympiad. The theme for that year was humour and we studied Herman Charles Bosman's work. At that point in my life I believed I would pursue a creative career. The following year I enrolled at Wits University for a Bachelor of Commerce degree (someone had mentioned creative accounting...). I majored in Law and Economics. Some of my most memorable times during my undergrad days involved debating and I was honoured to have represented Wits University twice at World Debating Championships. After graduation I proceeded to study for an Economics Honours degree. After my honours I was recruited as an associate lecturer in economics and enrolled for a Masters in Economics.
At this stage, I started thinking more seriously about studying overseas. In 2002, I was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, which I used to read for an MSc in Economics for Development. I had been vaguely aware of the Rhodes Scholarship in high school and became even more aware of it in university. At first, I could not relate to it in the sense that I could not think of myself as a Rhodes Scholar. It was too intimidating, too distant, almost esoteric, something other people (i.e. anaemic nerds with stringy hair who went to conservative private schools) did. As time went on, I learnt more about it, people started recommending that I apply for it, and eventually I did. The whole experience, from applying for the scholarship to studying at Oxford was, needless to say, life-transforming. I became both more and less anxious about my future. I met intelligent, thoughtful, ambitious, weird people from all over the world and this benefited my personal growth very much.
The MSc in Economics for Development complemented the Economics Masters I did at Wits better than I expected. I had expected some repetition but was pleasantly suprised to find very little. I was also concerned about the methodological and theoretical rigour at Oxford but apart from a few minor stumbles at the beginning, I was able to handle these and perform well in my quants course and my research project. I had never done a development economics course before, though some of the courses I had done had introduced me to the literature, and the course helped my intellectual understanding of the key economic challenges facing the developing world. It changed the way I view finance and economics as a whole, and I think this will make me more effective in the roles I take on in my career, including that of a business person. For decades, people have attempted to 'do business as usual' in developing countries, and this has hurt these societies whilst not even providing maximum benefits to business. I believe that only when the subtleties of doing business under different conditions are well understood, will there be significant wealth creation in Africa.
At Oxford, I became involved with a creative writers' collective called slice( ) mango and this reinvigorated my creative spirit. I hope to some day publish fiction. I am currently exploring issues such as reconciliation and forgiveness, socio-economic development and colorism in my writing.