Dr. Olufunke A Alaba holds a PhD degree in economics with a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in health economics from the department of economics at the University of Pretoria. She is currently a senior lecturer in the health economics unit at the School of Public Health and Family Medicine at the University of Cape Town.  She is involved in research, teaching, and advisory services in the areas of health economics, sustainable development, social determinants of health, food security, poverty, and inequality.

She has interacted with various international institutions and agencies, both as principal investigator and collaborator. She has completed empirical studies on economics and the health impact of water supply, the economic impact of clinically tested malaria on household time allocation, and  poverty and inequality for the African Economic Research Consortium in Nairobi, Kenya. In addition, she participated in the Community Directed Intervention on Tropical Disease for the World Health Organization and Tropical Disease Research in Geneva. Her other experiences include research scholarships at Cornell University in the USA, the World Bank, Washington D.C., United Nations University World Institute for Development Economic Research in Helsinki, Finland, among others.  

In addition, she is an experienced policy impact modeler and analyst of large data, particularly survey data. She has published significantly in peer-reviewed journals, as well as professionally reviewed chapters in books.