Abdelhamid Benhmade is a French-speaking coordinator and young Open AIR researcher at the Center for Research in Law, Technology and Society at the University of Ottawa.
As an associate researcher at Open African Innovation Research ( Open AIR ), Abdelhamid Benhmade is interested in urban innovation systems and informal entrepreneurship. Abdelhamid Benhmade is continuing his doctoral studies in international development at the School of International Development and Globalization at the University of Ottawa. As such, he specializes primarily in development, innovation and entrepreneurship.
Abdelhamid Benhmade pays particular attention to two main fields of research, namely, the geo-economics of global cities and international entrepreneurship. His passion for international business led him to conduct a thesis on global cities and their functions in terms of business internationalization. His research on the economic functions that African global cities perform is one of ten researches chosen by the 2020 International Policy Ideas Competition , organized by Global Affairs Canada and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
Currently, Abdelhamid Benhmade serves as director of Africa relations at ICCCASU , an African, Canadian and Chinese think tank on inclusive and sustainable urbanization. Added to all this is his involvement as a principal researcher with the RQMI, a Quebec network which acts and advocates for an inclusive and sustainable alter-globalization. As such, some of his publications take a critical look at free trade, among others, his latest article published in Le Devoir and his column published by La Presse .
At the same time, Abdelhamid Benhmade acts as an external consultant, notably with On Think Tank ( OTT ) and the Network for Social and Ecological Innovation ( RISE ). He has several academic productions to his credit, the most recent of which is the co-direction of a collective work entitled: Issues and challenges of international development . The result of a successful collaboration between 83 scientists from the four corners of the world, it is one of the rare French-speaking works to cover all development issues.