ABOUT

Dr Kenneth Creamer is an academic economist based at the University of the Witwatersrand. 

Creamer has Masters degrees in Law (Wits) and Financial Economics (SOAS, University of London) and a PhD (Wits) for which he was awarded a Gold Medal by the Economic Society of South Africa as South Africa’s best PhD in Economics submitted in 2010. In 2020 he completed a certificate course in Leading Economic Growth offered by Harvard Kennedy School.

Creamer has published on fiscal policy, monetary policy, open economy macroeconomics, competition policy, labour market policy and energy policy, in local and international academic journals and books including the South African Journal of Economics, the Journal of Development Studies, the Oxford Handbook on the South African Economy and the Oxford Companion to the Economics of South Africa. 

In October 2019, Creamer was appointed by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa to the Presidential Economic Advisory Council (PEAC) for an initial three year term, subsequently extended to May 2024.  In November 2024, Creamer was again appointed by President Ramaphosa to PEAC for the 2024 to 2029 period.  He was also appointed by South Africa's Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition, Minister Parks Tau, to the Ministerial Industrialisation Think-Action Tank for the same period. 

In addition to his senior lecturer position at Wits University, Creamer serves as a Director of Creamer Media, publisher of Engineering News, Mining Weekly and Polity. He is also a member of the Management Committee of SASSFE, which raises funds for tertiary education students in need of support and provides a platform for inter-generational dialogue.

Earlier, Creamer was Student Representative Council (SRC) President at Wits University in 1991-2 and worked as Research Coordinator in Cosatu’s Parliamentary Office in the mid-1990’s. From 2022 to 2023, Creamer was elected as a member of the Council of the Economic Society of South Africa.