PEOPLE /
Our directors:
Sha'ista Goga
+27 10 590 6192 / +27 79 963 5684
Sha’ista Goga is an economist focused on competition, economic regulation and healthcare.
Sha’ista has provided advice on competition to various companies, regulators and multilateral institutions. This includes analysis and advice to clients on both mergers and prohibited practices cases in industries such as telecommunications, healthcare, broadcasting, publishing and printing, industrial components, and agriculture. Sha’ista has also advised multilateral and regional organisations on the development and implementation of competition policy and has been active in training authorities and regulators. Sha’ista is currently a Part-time Member at the Competition Tribunal. Sha'ista has extensive experience on economic regulation, particularly in the healthcare, financial services, ICT, and energy sectors, and has advised on various sectoral inquiries in Southern and East Africa. She has also acted as an economic expert in contested matters before the High Court.
Sha'ista holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of the Witwatersrand as well as a Master of Philosophy in Economics from Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. Sha’ista was also an associate lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand.
Ryan Hawthorne
+27 11 880 1673 / +27 83 445 2185
Dr Ryan Hawthorne is an economist working on competition and economic regulation.
His focus areas include competition/antitrust economics and the economics of telecommunications regulation.
Ryan has led the economic analysis of a range of telecommunications regulation projects in a number of countries, including the market enquiry into mobile broadband for the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA), and the recent spectrum licensing valuation and invitation to apply for ICASA. Ryan has also led the economic analysis for a number of major competition cases for Acacia as well as in his role at the Competition Commission of South Africa, including in the telecommunications, dairy, news media, forestry, grocery retail and automotive components sectors. Ryan has also worked on a number of competition and regulation matters in the telecommunications sector, including in leading the economic analysis for the margin squeeze complaint against the fixed line incumbent in South Africa, Telkom, and leading key aspects of investigations relating to wholesale access to mobile networks in a number of countries. He has also been engaged in strategy development in the telecommunications sector.
Ryan holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Cape Town, a Master’s degree in Economics from the University of the Witwatersrand and a BBusSc (Hons), University of Cape Town. He has presented a number of papers at conferences and has several publications.
PRINCIPAL ECONOMIST:
RAHMA LEUNER
Rahma is a principal economist at Acacia Economics, working in the fields of competition and regulatory economics.
Prior to her work with Acacia Economics she worked at the Competition Commission of South Africa, a health economics research organisation and the competition and regulatory practice of Genesis Analytics. She has worked on expert economic reports, policy responses, market inquiries, impact assessments and a concentration tracker report for South Africa.
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Consultant:
rOALD KVEVLI
Roald is a telecommunications consulting professional with over 33 years of experience in the industry.
He focuses in areas such as telecommunications business and technology strategy, telecommunications rollout and planning, telecommunications network and product costing, telecommunications cost optimisation, business planning and modelling, and network systems integration.
Roald has extensive experience in telecommunications, most recently as an independent consultant with KraftTech and as a non-executive director for the firm.
Our academic associates:
Professor Simon Roberts has been working in the field of competition and regulatory economics for over a decade. He has testified as an expert economist in several landmark cases and advised competition authorities throughout the continent.
Professor Lukasz Grzybowski has published extensively on the economics of competition and regulation in leading journals and has advised regulators and private companies in a number of European and African countries on economic regulation.