SOL Economics is pleased to announce that Cuba’s Rafael Betancourt is now Consultant to our organization. For the past four years he has been local coordinator of the international project, “Socially Responsible Enterprise and Local Development in Cuba”, connecting international social and solidarity economy leaders with their Cuban counterparts and crafting a network for promoting SSE and social responsibility in Cuba with wide participation of activists from many sectors.

He combines this with his work as English Editor of Revista Temas, Cuba’s premier social science and humanities journal, and as professor of Urban Economics at the Colegio Universtario San Geronimo de La Habana of the University of Havana. He is a frequent lecturer and speaker on Cuban economics both in Cuba and abroad and has published extensively.

Prior to this, he was Regional Manager of the Canadian Urban Institute (CUI) in Cuba and the Caribbean (1999-2010), where he gained ample on-site experience in managing, coordinating and implementing international development and local government capacity-building activities, and Consultant and Trainer for UN-HABITAT Localising Agenda 21 Program in Cuba (2005-2008). As a Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) consultant he carried out the studies, Canadian Universities in Cuba (2011) and a follow-up study, Civil Society in Cuba and Canadian Linkages (2012).

Rafael received his PhD (A.B.D) in Economics from the University of Florida and a Masters in Urban and Regional Planning from Havana Polytechnic Institute (ISPAJE). He currently shares his time between Havana and Los Angeles, California.

For a sample of Rafael’s recent work, see:

“Corporate Social Responsibility in Cuba”, Estudios del Desarrollo Social: Cuba y América Latina Vol. 4, núm. 2 (2016): Mayo-Agosto. Also available in [Spanish] PDF

“What Can Cuba Do?”, Catalejo blog, Revista Temas, April 2016. Also available in [Spanish] PDF;

“Working Group on Social and Solidarity Economy for Local Development SSE→LD”, a presentation made during the National Seminar titled “Emerging Cooperativism as a Dynamizing Factor of Local and Territorial Development in Cuba”, UCLV, Habanilla, Villa Clara, December 8-10, 2015.

“Social and Solidary Economy and the Transformation of the Cuban Economic Model”, Catalejo Blog, Revista Temas, February 2014. Also available in  [Spanish] PDF.

For more information, contact Rafael Betancourt at rbetancourt@soleconomics.com

[06/01/2016]