Leonard Wantchekon

Leonard Wantchekon (born 1956) is a Beninese economist and professor of Politics and International Affairs at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, and an affiliate of the Economics Department at Princeton University. He taught at Yale University (1995–2001) and New York University (2001–2011). He is the founding director of the African School of Economics, which is based in Benin. His parents were farmers. In November 2018 he became the first black African to be pronounced Fellow of the Econometric Society.

He was a historical adviser on the 2022 American historical epic film The Woman King, directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, which is about the Agojie, the all-female warrior unit that protected the West African kingdom of Dahomey during the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. Wantchekon had a member of the Agojie in his extended family.