Activities

UNION AFRICAINE-AOSTI will mainly contribute to WP1, as co-leader of task 1.4 on “monitoring, evaluation and impact assessment”.

People

• Dr. Philippe Kuhutama Mawoko. Dr Mawoko is the Director of the African Observatory for STI within the African Union Commission. Over the last ten years at NEPAD, Dr Mawoko coordinated the African Science, Technology& Innovation Indicators Initiative (ASTII) and the African Mathematical Institutes Network for the Office of Science and Technology (OST) of the AU‐ NEPAD Planning & Coordinating Agency (NPCA). Prior to joining OST, Dr Mawoko worked as a Programme Manager in the NEPAD e‐Africa Commission. Former Minister of Post and Telecommunications in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Dr Mawoko led the initial policy reform in the post and telecommunication sector in the DRC. He served as senior consultant, forecasting new telecommunication products and services in the marketing division of Telkom South Africa. He worked as a Senior Manager in charge of the Management of Information system (MIS) section in the electronic division of NedCor Bank in South Africa. Dr Mawoko holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Salzburg in Austria (1988). He lectured Mathematics and Statistics in several universities including the University of Zimbabwe in Harare, the University of Lesotho in Roma and the University of Kinshasa in the DR Congo. He published widely, and continues to contribute in several market demand research projects, ICT and STI.
• Dr Almamy Konte. Dr Konte is a Senior Expert in Innovation Policy at the African Observatory for Science, Technology and Innovation (AOSTI) of the African Union Commission, based in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea. Dr Konte was the Director of the Technological Research in the Ministry of Scientific Research in Senegal, from May 2006 to May 2012. During this period, Dr Konte has been involved in projects that support the partnership between Europe and Africa (CaastNet, IST Africa). Dr Konte had provided several times its expertise to assist UNESCO, ECOWAS, NEPAD Agency in their STI capacity building programme for African countries. Dr Konte is a co-author in the UNESCO 2015 Science report specifically in the chapter on ECOWAS region. Dr Konte holds a PhD in Physics and he has many years of experience as lecturer and researcher at University Cheikh Anta Diop of Dakar and at the University Gaston Berger of SaintLouis where he was the Head of the Computer Science Department from 2001 to 2005. In the scope of his research work, Dr Konté has been an Associate Researcher at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy, from 2001 to 2009.
• Dr Bi Irie Vroh. Dr Vroh is Senior Expert, Science and Technology Policy at the African Observatory for STI (AOSTI). Prior to joining AOSTI, Dr Vroh was Breeder and head of a research for development program for West and Central Africa at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA). Holder of a PhD (1999) in Agronomic Sciences and Bio engineering from the University of Liege, Belgium (Gembloux Agro‐Bio Tech), he worked as a Molecular Geneticist and Project Lead in the USA at the University of Illinois Urbana‐Champaign, University of Missouri Columbia and Cornell University in the area of biotechnology, genomics, genetic diversity and genetic improvement of crop species. He has led and coordinated several international projects including the Generation Challenge Programme (GCP) for IITA and the Harvest Plus Challenge Programme (biofortification of food crops) engaging several countries in Africa, Latin America and the international research centers of the CGIAR group in the food security and food quality areas. DrVroh is presently an expert advisor of the International Foundation for Science (IFS, Sweden). He has conducted several capacity building workshops and mentored students as supervisor of B.Sc., M.Sc. and PhD programmes in connection with various Universities. Dr Vroh has published several papers in peer reviewed journals including Science, Nature Genetics, The Plant Cell, Bioinformatics, Plant Physiology, Transgenic Plant Journal, Plant pathology, Theoretical and Applied Genetics, Crop Sciences, Plant breeding, African Journal of Biotechnology etc., and has presented his research works at several national and international conferences.