Economist . Entrepreneur

Based: Johannesburg

Trudi Makhaya is a writer, economist and entrepreneur. In 2015, she founded an advisory firm focused on competition policy and entrepreneurship. Trudi has also served as an advisor and angel investor in young companies. She has held non-executive directorships at Vumelana Advisory Fund and MTN South Africa.

An active public commentator, Trudi is a columnist for Business Day and Acumen. She has also published academic journal articles on competition economics and policy. Trudi holds an MBA and an MSc in Development Economics from Oxford University, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. From the University of Witwatersrand, she holds an MCom in Economics, an honours degree in economics and a BCom in Law and Economics.

Trudi was an economist and later a member of the executive committee at the Competition Commission of South Africa from 2010 to 2014. She joined the Commission as Principal Economist, assessing the competitive effects of mergers and acquisitions, analysing complex competition enforcement cases and appearing as an expert witness at the Competition Tribunal. Trudi represented the Commission at various international fora including the OECD, BRICS, International Competition Network and the African Competition Forum.

Prior to joining the Competition Commission in 2010, Trudi held various management consulting and corporate roles at Deloitte South Africa, Genesis Analytics and AngloGold Ashanti.

In her spare time, Trudi writes fiction. Her recent work has been published in New Contrast and the Sol Plaatje European Union Poetry Anthology Vol IV.