Robert Darko Osei is an associate professor in the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER), University of Ghana, Legon, and the vice dean for the School of Graduate Studies at the University of Ghana. His main areas of research include evaluative poverty and rural research, macro and micro implications of fiscal policies, aid effectiveness and other economic development policy concerns.

Osei has published widely in edited volumes and top international journals. In 2015, he spent his sabbatical year as a visiting scholar at UNU WIDER (Finland) and at Yale University as the Coca-Cola World Fund Visiting Professor of African Studies at the MacMillan Center. Osei received his Ph.D. from the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom, examining aid, trade and growth in rural Ghana.