CAPRI TEAM
CAPRI's Core Team
DR. FELIX MARCO CONTEH
Director
Dr. Felix Marco Conteh is a governance and development expert focusing on Liberia and Sierra Leone. He is Director of the Centre for Alternative Policy Research and Innovation (CAPRI), and his work straddles academia and policy, and social risk analysis. Dr Conteh has worked for the Government of Sierra Leone at the highest levels, as well as consulting for a number of international organizations, including the World Bank, DFID and GIZ. His research interests revolve around post-war political settlements, political ecology, extractive governance, political economy, public financial management, community-based justice, local governance and social services. Dr. Conteh’s research has been published in leading international journals, including Journal of Modern African Studies, Canadian Journal of Development Studies, Resources Policy, Review of African Political Economy and Critical African Studies. He holds a PhD in Politics and International Studies from SOAS, University of London; MA International Development Management from the University of Bradford and a BA from Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone.
DR. YAKAMA MANTY JONES
Senior Research Fellow
Dr. Yakama Manty Jones is the Director of Research and Delivery at the Ministry of Finance in Sierra Leone. She leads collaborative efforts to generate the evidence needed to support informed policy formulation and decision making in the economic management space in the country. She is also the Focal Point for the Human Capital Project. With post-graduate qualifications from the University of Manchester and the University of London (Queen Mary& Westfield College and Birkbeck College), Dr. Jones also holds a Certificate in Social Entrepreneurship from the University of Oxford and is an Alumna of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s Executive Education Programme. She contributes to the education ecosystem through her research and faculty position in the Department of Economics and Commerce, Fourah Bay College, where she earned her Bachelor’s degree with Honours in Economics. Her research interests lie in Development Economics, International Business, Human Capital Development, Macro and micro-level data analysis for growth diagnostics, and using innovation and systems approaches to improve public service delivery. Dr. Yakama Jones is also an entrepreneur and the Founder of the Yak Jones Foundation. The Yak Jones Foundation promotes literacy by bringing the culture of reading among children in Sierra Leone.
DR. AISHA FOFANA IBRAHIM
Senior Research Fellow
Aisha Fofana Ibrahim is a feminist scholar and activist and one of Sierra Leone’s foremost scholar and practitioner in Gender and Development who strongly believes that power and privilege should be used in the service of others. She straddles the divide between policy and practice through teaching gender studies at the graduate level and promoting women’s empowerment in through advocacy. As a gender activist, her most current advocacy focus is on increased representation of women in decision making and leadership and in ensuring that a new and revised Sierra Leone constitution addresses the marginalization of women. Her current academic research focus is on gender and artisanal mining and the impact of Ebola on women and girls but she also works on violence against women, women’s political participation and women’s narratives and auto/biographical writings. Dr Ibrahim is currently a senior lecturer at INGRADOC as well as the Assistant to the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone. She is an active member of the women’s movement in Sierra Leone and a lead gender specialist in the country providing technical support to the state government and national and international non-governmental organizations in the area of women’s empowerment and gender analysis. She seats as chairperson or member, on several boards in Sierra Leone, including The African Young Voice Media Empire (AYV), Rainbo initiative, Brac Sierra Leone and the Institute for Governance Reform (IGR).