Africa-Europe Foundation

A strong believer in making market solutions work for the public good, Koen Peters’ 25-year career has been filled with various private and public sector roles to support sustainable and green business development. He is a firm advocate of the off-grid solar industry, seeing it as the best route towards universal energy access. Prior to joining GOGLA, Peters worked as renewable energy expert within the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he focused on development assistance programmes promoting energy access across Africa.

Dr Peter Piot is currently the Special Advisor on COVID-19 to the President of the European Commission, the EU Chief Scientific Advisor Epidemics and the Handa Professor of Global Health. Concurrently, he is a visiting professor at the Rega Institute, KU Leuven, the University of Antwerp and the National University of Singapore. He was the founding executive director of UNAIDS and former under-secretary-general of the United Nations, as well as the former director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. In 1976, he co-discovered the Ebola virus and has led pioneering research on HIV, women’s health and infectious diseases.

Mohamed Ramy’s work focuses on understanding how inclusive policies can resolve the divisive inequalities in healthcare systems. He previously undertook a Thomas J. Watson fellowship to explore the concepts of “healing” and “home” among refugee communities in six countries, before moving onto international development and global health. Ramy contributes to implementing culturally-informed, cross-disciplinary health strategies in Egypt. He currently acts as the Strategy & Partnerships Lead at Generations for Health to empower youth to speak on global health challenges, and has been recruited by DHB Global to lead in the expansion into the MENA market.

Keller Rinaudo is an American robotics and autonomous airplane entrepreneur. Before founding Zipline, Rinaudo was a software engineer and built computers out of RNA and DNA that operate in human cells. He became one of the youngest first authors to publish in the Nature Biotechnology journal. His company Zipline aims to provide medical deliveries to all Rwandan citizens and has been hailed by the World Health Organization as a “visionary project”.

With a multidisciplinary profile in the analysis of the agri-food systems, Marta Rivera-Ferre has a particular interest in alternative systems following the food sovereignty paradigm and more recently, applying a feminist framework to her research. She is a member of the editorial board of the Agricultural Systems and the Journal of Sustainable Development journal and was a lead author in the UN-led International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge Science and Technology for Development.

Jeffree Rugare’s mission is to reduce poverty and improve the quality of life for people throughout rural Zimbabwe. At Global Solar, he aims to promote affordable technology powered by renewable energy. Rugare is a financial expert whose skills have helped formulate influential business models. Currently, he is researching corporate governance and financing issues in the energy and mining industries case of Zimbabwe. He also offers business consultancy services to small and medium enterprises in the energy, mining and health sectors.

Crystal Rugege currently manages the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR) Rwanda, a partnership between the Government of Rwanda and the World Economic Forum to accelerate the inclusive adoption of technology for the benefit of society. As founding Director of Strategy, Rugege launched and scaled Carnegie Mellon University’s Africa’s campus. Rugege also sits on the board of I&M Bank Rwanda PLC, and is an Advisory Board Member of Andela, a company that identifies and develops software developers. Rugege is the recipient of CMU’s Inspirational Leadership Award and the Next Einstein Forum’s Women in STEM Leadership Award, among others.

Cormac Russell is Managing Director of Nurture Development and a faculty member of the Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) Institute at Northwestern University, Chicago. Over the last 20 years, Cormac has worked in over 30 countries around the world. He has trained communities, agencies, NGOs and governments in ABCD and other strengths-based approaches in Kenya, Rwanda, Southern Sudan, South Africa, the UK, Ireland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada and Australia. He is passionate about the proliferation of community-driven change and citizen-centred democracy and has supported hundreds of communities to make ABCD visible through what he calls ABCD Neighbourhood Learning Sites.

His career is rich of various high responsibilities in the sectors of education and training, research and innovation, agricultural and rural development. Dr.Sadiki has received several awards, recognizing his scientific research, including the FAO Merit Medal for his research on agricultural biodiversity, the Order of Agricultural Merit of the French Ministry of Agriculture, the IPGRI-CGIAR Merit Award, the University of Minnesota Distinction Award, Moroccan National Merit Award. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Platform for Agrobiodiversity Research, and a member of the Scientific Council of the International Center for Agricultural Research and Development (CIRAD). He is Morocco’s representative on the Board of Governors of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). He is on the board of administration of the newly created Institut Agro, France. He chairs several boards of national institutions as well as member of board of others national and international institutions. In his current role, he leads the implementation of national agricultural development strategy Green Morocco Plan up to 2020 and the launching of the new strategy Green Generation established for the horizon 2030.

Dr Esperança Sevene has worked as Clinical Pharmacologist at Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM) for over 25 years. In 2001 as part of the collaboration between UEM and Manhiça Health Research Centre (CISM), she joined the Centre to work on the safe use of drugs and vaccines in pregnancy amongst other areas. She was involved in the implementation of the National Pharmacovigilance System in Mozambique and other African countries in collaboration with the World Health Organization. She currently acts as Director of the PhD Program in Bioscience and Public Health at UEM and part-time Associate Researcher at CISM.

Tania Songini is a senior executive and non-executive director with international experience in the infrastructure sector. She worked for Siemens for 20 years, recently serving as Finance Director of Siemens Energy UK and NW Europe. Her energy experience and interests span renewable energy, storage, and e-Vehicles and hydrogen as levers to decarbonise transport. Songini is passionate about socio-economic issues in developing countries. Her Board roles include the Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG), as well as InfraCo Africa, a development and finance provider for innovative transport, energy, telecommunication projects in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Kristine Sørensen is a health literacy trailblazer, knowledge broker and trusted advisor on health literacy and global health perspectives. She is widely known for being the founding Director of the Global Health Literacy Academy, located in Denmark. Her experience includes work in international institutions, including several EU bodies and the World Health Organization. She also worked at McKinsey. Sørensen received the European Health Award 2012 for the societal impact of the European Health Literacy study, as well as the International Health Literacy Award and the AHLA Global Health Literacy Award 2018. She is co-author of the International Handbook of Health Literacy, and lectures at several leading universities.

Annette Ssemuwemba is an international development professional with over 20 years of experience in developing and executing corporate strategic initiatives aimed at improving trade competitiveness. In her current role, she implements sustainable solutions to address institutional and productive capacity constraints in 47 least-developed countries. Prior to that, as Chief Strategy and Results Officer for the multi-million Aid for Trade initiative, she worked across Eastern Africa, designing and implementing strategic interventions to address trade, transport and logistics challenges and increase trade competitiveness.

Johan Swinnen is the Director-General of IFPRI, which, working in over 50 countries, provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries. Swinnen is also a member of the Champions 12.3 Leadership Group to Reduce Food Loss and Waste and a Commissioner of the Food Systems Economics Commission. He is a fellow of the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association and the European Association of Agricultural Economists and a former president of the International Association of Agricultural Economists.

Marleen Temmerman is an experienced obstetrician, supervising over 18,000 births in different parts of the world and publishing around 500 contributions in the area of women’s health. Among her several awards and honours, Temmerman was elected in 2007 as Senator in the Belgian Parliament where she was member of the Committee on Social Affairs and Chair of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. Her previous leadership positions include Director of the Department of Reproductive Health and Research (RHR) at the World Health Organization, where she was the main penholder of the UN Global Strategy for Women’s, Children and Adolescent’s Health (2016-2030), launched in September 2015.