Frédéric Lapeyre is Director of the Priority Action Program “Transition from the Informal to the Formal Economy” at the International Labour Organization (ILO). From 2020 to 2024, he served as ILO Country Office Director for Côte d’Ivoire, Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, and Togo. Prior to that, he was the Head of the ILO Informal Economy Unit and coordinating the ILO’s work on the adoption and promotion of Recommendation No. 204 on “Transition from the Informal to the Formal Economy.”

Before joining the ILO, he was Professor at UCLouvain University, Chair of the Belgian Post-Graduate School of Development Studies, and a Fulbright Post-doctoral Fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies. He holds a Ph.D. in Development Studies from the Catholic University of Louvain, a Master’s in Comparative Development Studies from EHESS–Paris, and a European Master’s in Employment, Sciences and Technology from the University of Oslo/UCL.

His research and policy work focus on development policies, the informal economy and the promotion of decent work, social justice and inclusive growth. He has published extensively in academic journals and books