Andrew Donaldson is an economist and research associate of the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit at the University of Cape Town. He is a former head of the budget office and public finance divisions of the South African National Treasury and served as the inaugural head of the Government Technical Advisory Centre.  

He is a graduate of Stellenbosch University, UNISA and Cambridge University. He has published in the fields of demography, economics of education, social policy, macroeconomics and public finance and worked on employment creation, land restitution and education systems planning before joining the Department of Finance in 1993. He contributed to the work of the Katz Commission on tax policy, served on the Committee of Inquiry into a national health insurance system and was a member of the team that drafted the 1996 macroeconomic strategy. He was responsible for the introduction of a medium-term expenditure framework in 1998 and led the subsequent reform of the budget process and restructuring of budget documentation. After retiring from the National Treasury in 2018 he served as an advisor to the Association for Savings and Investment of South Africa and has taught at the UCT School of Economics. His current work is focused on growth, employment policy and social security reform.