Senior Management Committee

Ismael Fofana is the Director of the Department of Capacity and Deployment at AKADEMIYA2063. He holds a PhD in economics from the University of Paris 1 - Sorbonne.

He conducts research and provides technical supports and contributes to strengthen capacities to improve economic development policies in Africa. His work focuses on issues related to agricultural and food macro policies, and gender economic inequality and poverty reduction.

Ismael worked for the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington D.C. (2010-2020) and the Partnership for Economic Policy (PEP) at Laval University in Canada (2003-2010). He established and expanded the activities of the African Office of PEP in Dakar, Senegal and assisted in the overall management of the network as director for Africa (2005-2007). He headed the IFPRI West and Central Africa Office in Dakar, Senegal (2014-2017) and coordinated the network component of the African Growth and Development Policy (AGRODEP) Modeling Consortium.

Over the last decade, Ismael has coordinated the deployment of AGRODEP members and ReSAKSS supports and contributed to provide technical assistance to and strengthen the capacity of African Union member States to domesticate the African Union’s Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Program (CAADP).

Getaw Tadesse holds a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (Norway). He has more than 10 years of experience in agricultural development and food security research and project management.

Before joining AKADEMIYA2063, he worked as a Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), and as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Center for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn, Germany. His research seeks to understand (a) the dynamics of food prices and trades at local, national, regional and global markets; (b) the role of the private sector and civil society in African agri-food system and public supports needed to enhance their competitiveness; and (c) the impacts of policies and programs on food and nutrition security, commercialization of smallholders, competitiveness of private enterprises and food markets.

His research has a geographical focus in Africa with extensive experience in Ethiopian agricultural development and food systems. He is very conversant on household and plot level data collection and econometric methods.

He has published over 20 articles in professional journals and books listed in Google scholar with citations (782) and h-index (10). Furthermore, he has contributed to enhancing the capacity of African experts and policymakers on national agricultural investment planning, assessment of program and policy opportunities and the use of evidence-based planning and implementation of food security and employment generation programs.

Sunday Pierre Odjo is Deputy Director of the Department of Knowledge Systems. He is an agricultural economist with research interest in farm household modeling and trade and agricultural policy analysis.

Before transitioning over to Akademiya2063, he served as a Senior Research Coordinator in the Africa Division of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). Over the past ten years, he has supported West African Authorities for the development of national agricultural investment plans as part of IFPRI’s scientific and technical assistance to the implementation of the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Program (CAADP).

He recently led several survey projects in Niger as part of a collaborative research work between IFPRI and the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC). Prior to joining IFPRI, he served as an Agricultural and Trade Policy Advisor in the Secretariat of the Conference of Ministers of Agriculture of West and Central Africa, facilitating country-level implementation of CAADP Framework for Improving Rural Infrastructure and Trade-Related Capacities for Market Access.

He holds a PhD in Rural Economics from the Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium and an MA in Geography and Land Use Planning from the National University of Benin.

Dr Katrin Glatzel is the Director of the Department of Policy Innovation AKADEMIYA2063, where she leads and coordinates the institution’s activities in support of facilitating the identification, replication and scaling up of successful policies and strategies in order to further boost and accelerate progress towards inclusive growth, improved food and nutrition security outcomes and increased prosperity in Africa.

Prior to joining A2063, she was a Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute based in Dakar, Senegal and Program Head of the Malabo Montpellier Panel. Previously, Dr. Glatzel was a Policy & Research Officer at Imperial College London, where she continues to be a Visiting Researcher.

She holds a PhD in Environmental Research from Imperial College London and the MSc Public Management and Governance from the London School of Economics and Political Science, as well as a BA in European Studies from Maastricht University in the Netherlands. She also spent one semester at the Bosphorus University in Istanbul, Turkey, studying International Relations and Human Rights.

Prior to joining AKADEMIYA2063 as Director of Data Management, Digital Products and Technology, Racine worked as a ReSAKSS Research Coordinator at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). His primary areas of research are in Predictive Modeling, Machine Learning techniques applied to geospatial data and crop type classification with unsupervised learning techniques. Racine believes in harnessing technology and digital tools to impact policy and decision-making processes in the agricultural sector.

Racine is a 2018 Obama Leaders Africa program fellow. He holds a Master's degree in Mathematical Modeling and Multi-Scale Simulation through a joint degree program between the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées and the Paris-Est Marne-La-Vallée University. He subsequently earned a doctoral degree in the field of Engineering Sciences applied to Spatial Transport Systems, through the French Space Agency (Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales) and the University of Bordeaux.

NabouTall oversees the effective implementation of the communications and outreach activities of Akademiya 2063. She is responsible for the development and implementation of Akademiya2063 Vision and communications strategy through a variety of channels. Nabou has more than 15 years of experience in communications and outreach in Africa working for advertising firms, private sector companies and international organizations.

She has an extensive work experiences on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change as she worked for The International Development and Research Centre’s office in Dakar (Senegal), CGIAR CCAFS programme for West Africa in Bamako (Mali) and for the Centre for technical and Rural Agriculture (CTA) in Wageninen (The Netherlands).

Prior to joining Akademiya2063, Nabou was the communications manager of Transform Nutrition West Africa, a project based within IFPRI West and Central Africa’s office.

She seats as Member of the Scientific Committee of Institut Senegalais de Recherches Agricoles (ISRA), the national research centre for Agriculture in Senegal.

Nabou Tall holds a Bachelor in Sciences from the University of Montreal (UdeM - Canada) and a Master of Arts in Social and Public Communications from the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM - Canada).