Robert Darko Osei is a Professor of Development Economics at the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER), University of Ghana, Legon. Until July 2025, he was the Dean for the School of Graduate Studies at the same University.

His main areas of research include evaluative poverty and rural research, structural transformation and its implications for poverty and inequality, and other economic development policy concerns. He is currently the Country Director for the Ghana node of the African Centre of Excellence in Inequality Research (ACEIR). Robert serves on a number of boards nationally and internationally is currently a member of the Standing Panel on Impact Assessment (SPIA) of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).

He is a co-chair of the Digital Agricultural Innovations and Services Initiative (DAISI), an initiative being jointly managed by J-PAL (based in MIT, USA) and the Center for Effective Global Action (based in UC Berkeley, USA). He also currently serves as a Director of Stanbic Bank Ghana Limited.