Transform Nutrition West Africa’s team focuses on ‘knowledge for action’. Discover the faces behind TNWA approach.
Stuart Gillespie
Project Director/ Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI
Stuart provides vision, project leadership and strategic direction to Transform Nutrition West Africa. Stuart is a senior research fellow with the Poverty, Health and Nutrition Division of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and was CEO of the Transform Nutrition Research Program Consortium, Research Director of the Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia (LANSA) consortium, and is currently leader of the SPEAR flagship (Supporting Policies, Programs and Enabling Action through Research) of the Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH) research program
Roos Verstraeten
Regional Research Co-ordinator, IFPRI West and Central Africa Office
Roos coordinates the research and regional knowledge platform Transform Nutrition West Africa. She has a PhD in Bioscience Engineering (2014) from Ghent University, Belgium. She has developed and implemented nutrition research projects in various contexts. She has expertise in applying both qualitative and quantitative methodologies for overweight/obesity prevention and specialized in evidence synthesis methodologies to inform decision-making for nutrition. Prior to joining IFPRI she coordinated EVIDENT, an evidence-informed decision-making initiative in nutrition and health in Africa, for the Institute of Tropical Medicine and worked as a research fellow at Ghent University.
Lucy Billings
Sr. Project Manager, IFPRI
Lucy is the project manager for Transform Nutrition West Africa, coordinating across the project workstreams and between the project partners. She holds a M.S. and M.P.H. from Tufts University where she studied food and agriculture policy. Lucy was a Leland International Hunger Fellow from 2011-2013. She has worked with IFPRI for seven years providing technical support and coordination for research on food security, poverty reduction, and nutrition in developing countries.
Namukolo Covic
Senior Research and Regional Engagement Co-ordinator, IFPRI Addis Ababa
Namukolo is leading regional coordination and engagement with regional networks for the project. Before joining IFPRI she was a Senior Lecturer at North-West University (South Africa) and led the Food and Nutrition Security Research Programme there within the Centre of Excellence for Nutrition. She has expertise in capacity and leadership development for nutrition and has been a key member of the African Nutrition Leadership Programme (ANLP). Namukolo is in She is also leading on the Nigeria Stories of Change in Nutrition work for Transform Nutrition West Africa.
Elodie Becquey
Research Fellow, IFPRI West and Central Africa Office
Elodie is responsible for regional and country research engagement, and focal point for Burkina Faso. Elodie’s research experience includes impact evaluation of various nutrition-sensitive and nutrition-specific interventions and programs in Africa, with a focus on Burkina Faso. She also studies diets and food security in urban and rural area in various populations, including households, women, children and adolescents. Elodie is leading the Burkina Faso Stories of Change in Nutrition and Food Security work for Transform Nutrition West Africa.
Nick Nisbett
Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Development Studies, UK
Nick leads on the Evidence and diagnostics short course for Transform Nutrition West Africa and co-leads the Stories of Change in Nutrition work. He also co-leads the Health and Nutrition Cluster of researchers and teaches on development and nutrition at the Institute of Development Studies. His work explores the political economy of nutrition policy and programming in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa and he has published research on national and international nutrition governance and policy processes, community level drivers of nutrition and community accountability. He has led major multi-methods evaluations of nutrition and livelihoods programmes as well as research focused on state, district and local level constraints to implementation of programmes at scale.
Mara van den Bold
Senior Research Analyst, International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, DC
Mara co-ordinates the Stories of Change work for Transform Nutrition West Africa alongside Nick. At IFPRI, her work has primarily fallen under several large research consortia, including Transform Nutrition (2012 – 2017), Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia (LANSA) (2012 – 2018), and Transform Nutrition – West Africa (TN-WA) (2017 – 2021). She has also worked on IFPRI’s impact evaluation of Helen Keller International’s Enhanced Homestead Food Production program in Burkina Faso.
Samantha Reddin
Communications Manager, Institute of Development Studies, UK
Samantha is responsible for the development and implementation of the communications strategy for Transform Nutrition West Africa and is part of the management team. She has extensive experience developing and implementing communication and campaign strategies in international development and was previously the Research Uptake Manager for the DFID-funded Transform Nutrition Research Programme Consortium.
Leah Salm
Research Analyst, International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, DC
Leah is involved in the evidence synthesis component of the project. This involves identifying, mapping, and extracting high-quality evidence from published materials and collating it in a way that is useful for the project and our partners. Examples of the work include systematic reviews, rapid reviews, and input into the newsletter to highlight new research in the region. Leah’s background is in Development Studies, and she has recently completed an MSc in Global Health, with a focus on the double burden of malnutrition.
Richmond Aryeetey
Associate Professor, University of Ghana
Richmond is leading the Ghana Stories of Change in Nutrition work for Transform Nutrition West Africa and has worked in Ghana as a researcher in maternal and child health for the last 13 years. His expertise spans Primary research skills, Formative research, and Monitoring and Evaluation, Training and Facilitation. Richmond’s current research projects include studies of food environment of urban-dwelling adolescents, and exploring policy options for scaling up optimal feeding among infants and young children in Ghana.
Johann Jerling
Professor of Nutrition and Director of the African Nutrition Leadership Programme, North-West University, South Africa
Johann is a South African national and has been committed to leadership development in nutrition in Africa for more than 17 years. In addition to leading the African Nutrition Leadership Programme he has been involved in leadership development initiatives in Kenya, Zambia, Rwanda and Uganda. He is responsible for developing and hosting the two leadership development courses within Transform Nutrition West Africa.
Ampa Diatta
Research Analyst, IFPRI West and Central Africa Office
Ampa is involved in the evidence synthesis component of TNWA. This involves identifying and mapping the available research evidence through rapid reviews, systematic mapping reviews, and policy landscape analyses to generate and synthesize knowledge on optimal approaches to improve nutrition in the region. At IFPRI, his work also focuses on process evaluation studies and gender-based qualitative research. He was involved in implementation of various qualitative and quantitative surveys in Africa. Before joining IFPRI in 2014, Ampa worked for the Senegalese government at the National Cell Against Malnutrition (Cellule de Lutte Contre la Malnutrition, CLM) where he was coordinating community nutrition programs. He holds a master’s degree in human food and nutrition from the Cheikh Anta Diop University, Senegal.
Dieynab Diatta
Research Analyst, IFPRI West and Central Africa Office
Dieynab provides research and data analysis support to TNWA. Her work revolves around analyzing secondary data, assessing intervention coverage of nutrition programs and nutrition data quality in West Africa. Her expertise is in the analysis of household /agricultural surveys and the impact evaluation of agricultural projects. She holds a master’s degree in Applied Economics and Management from Cornell University. She also has wide-ranging experience in the development context having worked on a nutrition project in rural Maharashtra, India with ICRISAT and a value chain project in Senegal’s Groundnut Basin. Her research interests are at the nexus of poverty reduction, agricultural development and resilience of rural households.
Loty Diop
Research Analyst, IFPRI West and Central Africa Office
Loty is involved in the evidence synthesis component of the project. This includes conducting secondary data analysis on topics prioritized by stakeholders, applying systematic review/map approaches, tracking high quality evidence to inform the quarterly newsletter, and producing data visualization tools. She is also involved in other IFPRI projects for which she provides support to data collection, management and analysis as well as reports and research articles production. Loty holds an engineering degree in statistics and a master’s degree in public health, specialized in biostatistics.
Daniel Balilane Simpa
Administrative and Events Coordinator, IFPRI West and Central Africa Office
Daniel‘s role is to Coordinate with the IFPRI Dakar office administrative team on vendor and contract payments. Manage the short Course budgets and track spending working closely with the Project Manager. Support the contracting for project collaborators, track deliverables and payments, and track the overall project spending under the supervision of the Project Manager. And finally, to support the team with the organization of any other TNWA-related events. Daniel holds a Master of Arts in English with a Specialization in American Literature and Civilization from the Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar and has previously spent 4 years working at IFPRI serving as the Program Assistant for the Division Director & the Office Head along with MAMO and E-Atlas projects.
Mariama Toure
Research Analyst, IFPRI West and Central Africa Office
Mariama is involved in the Evidence Synthesis and the Stories of Change components of the project. Her work focuses on identifying gaps in maternal, infant, and young child nutrition data in West Africa, rapid reviews, quantitative analyses for nutritional change stories. Mariama also contributes to Transform Nutrition West Africa’s newsletter to inform on the latest publications on nutrition in the region. As a research analyst at IFPRI, she also works on various projects in the Poverty, Health and Nutrition Division (PHND). Mariama holds master’s degrees in Statistics and in Public Economics, with a specialization in Health Economics.