Biographies
Panelists:
Faris Ahmed joined USC Canada in 2005 and leads policy work in close collaboration with ecological agriculture, biodiversity and food sovereignty networks in the South and in Canada. He is an active member of the civil society networks of the Committee for World Food Security (CFS), the CBD Alliance and Food Secure Canada. Faris has worked at the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Oxfam, South Asia Partnership, and as a photographer/writer covering environmental issues. He holds an MA in International Development Studies from the University of Toronto.
Carla Sbert Carlsson, is doctoral candidate at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Graduate Studies in Law. She studied law at ITAM in Mexico (her native country) and holds a Masters in Law degree from Harvard Law School. After twenty years working on environmental law and policy in different contexts, she is now carrying out doctoral research on a new legal paradigm: ecological law. Carla is interested in the role law can play in the transition from the current economic-growth-based society to one based on ecological justice and ecological integrity.
H.E. Dr. Sulley Gariba has been Ghana’s High Commissioner to Canada since January 2015. A policy analyst, governance and evaluation specialist, Dr. Sulley Gariba is one of Ghana’s foremost specialists on Canadian and international development. He studied and lectured in Canada for about 15 years, obtaining a Masters and Ph.D in Political Science and International Relations. Until his appointment, he served as Senior Policy Advisor to the President of Ghana (2010-2014); Executive Director of a Ghana-based think-tank – the Institute for Policy Alternatives, Ghana; was founding President of the International Development Evaluation Association (IDEAS) from 2002 to 2005 and President of the African Evaluation Association from 2007-2009. He has provided professional advice to several African governments and international agencies – OECD/DAC on Evaluation of the Paris Declaration between 2006 and 2008; part of a 7-member panel of evaluation experts to assess the evaluation function in UNICEF; team leader for the Review of UNDP’s Evaluation Policy in 2009; designed and delivered training on the use of citizen-based tools for evaluating poverty for over a dozen African Parliaments; and led a major evaluation of UNDP’s HIV and AIDS programs in 10 Southern Africa countries and Ethiopia.
Dr. Chris Huggins has more than 16 years of research experience on land, agricultural reform, and natural resources rights in Africa. His current work as a Banting Post-Doctoral Fellow at Wilfrid Laurier University examines the use of information communication technologies for climate adaptation in Southern Africa. He has a PhD in Geography (specialization in political economy) from Carleton University, Ottawa. He is particularly interested in Governmentality studies as well as other forms of critical political economy. In addition to his current post-doc position, he is an Adjunct Professor at the Institute of African Studies, Carleton University; and Non-Resident Research Fellow at the African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS), which was ranked among the top 25 most influential climate change think tanks in the world in 2013.
He recently co-edited (with Scott Leckie) Repairing Climate Displacement: The Peninsula Principles (Routledge, 2015); and has published articles in major journals including the Journal of Peasant Studies, Geojournal, L’Afrique des Grands Lacs and Peace Review.
Beth Mburu is a PhD Candidate at Carleton University’s Department of Geography and Environmental Studies. In her doctoral research, she has been working with a group of smallholder farmers in the Mt. Kenya region to understand their perceptions and responses to food insecurity and climate change. During the course of her PhD, Beth has held several awards including the Canadian Standards Association Pat Kiendel Graduate Scholarship in Climate Change, the Ina Hutchinson Award in Geography, Richard J. Van Loon Scholarship and the Dr. Thomas Betz Memorial Award among others. Beth has a Masters in Environmental Management from Yale University, CT U.S.A. where she held the International Peace Scholarship supported by the Philanthropic Educational Organization (P.E.O.) – an organization committed to supporting women’s education. Her undergraduate degree was a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from the University of Nairobi, Kenya. Her passion in promoting education access and improving livelihood outcomes in Africa has enabled her to participate in projects and forums across the continent including in Egypt, Morocco, Ghana, Cameroon and Malawi as well as the East African countries. Beth has previously worked with Innovations for Poverty Action (now Evidence Action) and Equity Group Foundation (part of Equity Bank Holdings Ltd) as an employee as well as consulted for the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). She is also a Senior Partner at EED Advisory (www.eedadvisory.com), which offers consulting on sustainable energy, climate change and natural resource management.
Stephanie McDonald is a Senior Policy Advisor with the Canadian Foodgrains Bank (CFGB), a partnership of 15 Canadian churches and church-based agencies working together to end global hunger. Stephanie has a BA Honours in International Development Studies and Canadian Studies from Trent University in Peterborough, ON and a Masters of Public Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the UK. Before joining CFGB, Stephanie worked with the East African NGO Twaweza and as a consultant with the Embassy of Finland in Tanzania. She has also lived and worked in Yellowknife, Iqaluit and Blantyre, Malawi. Stephanie grew up on a farm in southwestern Ontario.
H.E. Amb. Nouzha Chekrouni has been Moroccan High Commissioner to Canada since 2009. She is also the current Dean of the Council of Arab League Ambassadors to Canada. She was once a Member of Moroccan Parliament, and a Minister for the Moroccan Community Residing Abroad, and Minister for Women and Social Issues. She is a Senior Fellow of the Advanced Leadership initiative, Harvard University. She holds a Post-Graduate Diploma and Doctorate degree in Linguistics from Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris III, France. H.E. Amb. Nouzha Chekrouni has vast experience in the academic field. She was a full-tenured Professor and Chair, French & Foreign Languages Department, Philological Faculty of Meknes, University Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdallah. She lectured Linguistics at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris from 1986-1998. She was also a one-time visiting professor at Middlebury College, Vermont, USA. H.E. Amb. Nouzha Chekrouni have also been involved in a number of Labour-Movement among which include Vice-President, Socialist International Organization, London, United Kingdom and National-Council Member, Public-Service Union (USFP) from 2008-till date. H.E. Amb. Nouzha Chekrouni speaks English, French, Arabic and Spanish fluently.
Amb. Jane Kerubo Onsongo was appointed to the post of Deputy Head of Mission, Kenya Mission, Ottawa, Canada with effect from July 2015. Before joining the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade in the Government of the Republic of Kenya, she served as a commissioner with the Ethics and Anticorruption Commission in Nairobi, Kenya. Jane also served as an Assistant Director Preventive Services at the defunct Kenya Anticorruption Commission. Prior to joining the Anticorruption Commissions Amb. Onsongo served as an Associate Professor of Education at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa, Nairobi for over 15 years. At the University she served as the Deputy Director of Research and Head of Undergraduate Studies in Education. She has been involved in gender related research and participated in building the capacity of women academics in research and scholarship in various institutions of higher learning in Kenya, Tanzania and Pakistan through the Association of Commonwealth Universities Women’s Programme and the Forum for African Women Educationists (FAWE). Jane Onsongo holds a Ph.D. in Higher and Further Education from the University College London, University of London, United Kingdom, Master of Arts in Women and Higher Education Management from the Institute of Education, University of London, United Kingdom; a Master of Education (Communication and Technology) and a Bachelor of Education (Arts) from Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya.
Edmond Wega is Senior Director, Pan Africa and Regional Development Program at Global Affairs Canada since August 2015. Prior to that, Mr. Wega was posted to Mozambique (2012-2015) and Ethiopia (2008-2012) where he was Senior Director and Head of Canadian Development Cooperation with accreditation to Djibouti (2008-2012), Malawi and Swaziland (2012-2015). He previously served as Director for the Canada Fund for Africa Secretariat and managed Canada’s $500 million initiative in support of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). Mr. Wega also has worked for the Privy Council Office, the Treasury Board Secretariat, the Ministry of Finance, Transport and Infrastructure Canada and the Laurentian Bank of Canada. Mr. Wega is fluent in French and English and he holds an MBA in Finance.
Moderators:
Mike Brklacich has engaged in interdisciplinary research relating to food security and food systems, rural livelihoods, human dimensions of global environmental change and environmental policy for more than 30 years. His research, in Canada and internationally, has focused on improving livelihoods in stressed rural resource-based communities. He has received research funding from SSHRC, Natural Resources Canada, Health Canada, Canada’s International Development Research Centre, the International Council of Science, the International Human Dimensions Program for Global Change, and UNESCO. He has played a leading role in the development of international research programs on Human Security and on Food Systems, as well as assisting with the development and advancement of the Inter-American Institute for Global Change. He has contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for more than 15 years and was part of the international team that was co-awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. After completing his PhD at the University of Waterloo in Geography in 1989, he was a research scientist with Agriculture and Agri-food Canada and has been a Carleton faculty member since 1992. He is a former Chair of the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies (2006-12) and is currently an Associate Dean (Graduate Programs and Research) in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. His recent appointment as a Chancellor’s Professor by Carleton University was in recognition of his long-term and influential contributions to human dimensions of global environmental change research.
Dominique Marshall is the History Department Chair at Carleton University. She teaches Canadian and Quebec history of poverty and welfare, families and childhood, state formation, as well as the transnational history of humanitarian aid, and Political Economy. She has written about the history of the Canadian welfare state, the history of children’s rights, and the Child Welfare Committee of the League of Nations. Her current research is about the Conference on the African Child of 1931, and the history of OXFAM in Canada. She was the president of the Canadian Historical Association from 2013 to 2015, and the French Editor of the Journal of the Canadian Historical Association for 20 years. She was trained at the Université de Montréal, with stays at Boston University, and the London School of Economics. Her book, Aux origines sociales de l’État providence (1998) (available in English as The Social Origins of the Welfare State(2006)) received the Jean-Charles Falardeau Prize (now the Canada Prize) from the Canadian Federation of Social Sciences and Humanities. She has been a member of the management board of the IAS for many years and also the coordinator of Canadian Network of Humanitarian History: http://aidhistory.ca . Her recent publications include “Usages de la notion de « droits des enfants » par les populations coloniales : la Conférence de l’enfance africaine de 1931“, Relations internationales, and “Birth Registration and the Promotion of Children’s Rights in the Interwar Years: The Save the Children International Union’s Conference on the African Child, and Herbert Hoover’s American Child Health Association”, Registration and Recognition. Documenting the Person in World History, Keith Breckenridge and Simon Szreter (eds), Proceedings of the British Academy.
Blair Rutherford is a professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at Carleton University, cross-appointed to the Institute of African Studies, Institute of Political Economy and Department of Geography & Environmental Studies. He has carried out research on the cultural politics and political economy of rural livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa since the early 1990s, currently working with Canadian and African colleagues on two research projects on women and artisanal and small-scale mining and state formation. He is the author of Working on the Margins: Black Workers, White Farmers in Postcolonial Zimbabwe (2001, London: Zed Books and Harare: Weaver Press) and Farm Labor Struggles in Zimbabwe: The Ground of Politics (forthcoming, Bloomington: Indiana University Press) and co-editor of Sexual Violence in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies: International Agendas and African Contexts (2014, London: Routledge).
Conveners:
Pius Adesanmi is a Professor of English and the Director of Carleton University’s Institute of African Studies. He obtained a First Class Honours degree in French Studies from the University of Ilorin, Nigeria, a master’s degree in French Studies from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, and a PhD in French Studies from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. He is a specialist of Francophone and Anglophone African and Black Diasporic literatures, politics, and cultures, an area in which he has published extensively. One of Nigeria’s contemporary leading public intellectuals and celebrated columnists, Adesanmi’s portfolio of more than thirty keynote lectures in the last five years includes appearances on such prestigious platforms as the Stanford Forum for African Studies, the Africa Talks Series of the London School of Economics, the Obafemi Awolowo Foundation’s annual lecture series, the Vanderbilt History Seminar, the International Leadership Platform of the University of Johannesburg, the African Unity for Renaissance Series of the Africa Institute of South Africa, and the annual talk series of the Academy of Science of South Africa. Professor Adesanmi was a member of the Diaspora Consultation series of the African Union’s Agenda 2063 in New York. In 2013-2014, he was a Carnegie Diaspora Visiting Professor of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon, where he designed the African Thinkers’ Program of UG-Ghana’s Institute of African Studies. He has since remained an annual facilitator of seminars at the University of Ghana’s Pan-African Doctoral Academy. He is a foundation faculty member of the Abiola Irele School of Theory and Criticism at Kwara State University, Nigeria. Adesanmi is the internationally-acclaimed winner of the inaugural Penguin Prize for African Writing (2010) in the non-fiction category with his book, you’re not a Country, Africa. His latest book, Naija No Dey Carry Last: Thoughts on a Nation in Progress, a collection of essays on Nigerian politics and culture, recently featured on Channels Book Club’s best Nigerian Books of 2015.
Ms. Nadia Ahmad joined the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (now Global Affairs Canada) in 2000 after having completed a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Toronto, a Juris Doctor at Michigan State University and a Master of Laws at the University of Ottawa. Ms. Ahmad has held a number of positions within the Department, covering multilateral, regional and bilateral relations. From 2007-2009, in her capacity as Director in the Afghanistan Task Force, she was responsible for Canada’s bilateral relationship with Afghanistan. In August 2009, Ms. Ahmad became the Director of Environmental Issues and Community Outreach in the Summits Management Office, where was responsible for ensuring that the G-8 and G-20 Summits hosted in Canada were sustainably managed, and also led the organization of a youth summit that ran parallel to the Leaders’ summits. Ms. Ahmad took on the role of Director of the North America Partnerships and Operations Division in 2010, where she led efforts to promote Canadian interests in the U.S. and Mexico. Joining the Sub-Saharan Africa Branch in 2013, Ms. Ahmad was first responsible for Canada’s bilateral relationships with countries in North Africa, and now serves as Director of Pan-Africa Affairs, where she provides thematic leadership on cross-cutting pan-African issues.
Kamari Clarkeis an Associate Professor at Carleton University in International and Global Studies. Over her career she has taught at Yale University (1999-2012), the University of Pennsylvania (2012-2015), and the University Toronto (2015) and was the former chair of the Council on African Studies at Yale (2007- 2010). For more than 20 years, Professor Clarke has conducted research on issues related to legal institutions, human rights and international law, religious nationalism and the politics of globalization. She has spent her career exploring theoretical questions of culture and power and in the field of law and anthropology detailing the relationship between new social formations and contemporary problems. One of her key contributions to the various disciplines that she inhabits has been to “demonstrate ethnographically the ways that religious and legal knowledge regimes produce practices that travel globally”.
Ms. Maeva Bernadotte joined the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (now Global Affairs Canada) in 2012 after completing her Master of Arts in International Studies, specialized in Development studies at the Laval University, Hautes Etudes Internationales (HEI). She holds a Bachelor in Social Sciences, specialized in Development studies from the University of Ottawa (2010). She did international volunteering in Burkina Faso (2008) and the Dominican Republic (2009) and was an international elections observer for the Organization of the African States (OAS) during the Haitian presidential elections in 2011. At GAC, she was a policy analyst in the Trade Negotiations Branch and in the Trade Sectors Bureau from 2012 to 2015. Since September 2015, she joined the Pan-African Affairs division as a policy analyst.
Louise Ouimet is Chair of the Africa Study Group, affiliated to the Canadian International Council – National Capital Branch since June 2013. She has over 40 years of experience in international development, with a particular emphasis on Africa. Among other positions, Ms Ouimet was posted as Canadian Ambassador to Burkina Faso from 1995 to 1997 and Mali from 2001 and 2005. In 2000-01, she was Senior Advisor, Development and Africa for the Prime Minister of Canada, working at the Privy Council and Chief of Staff to the President of CIDA in 2007-08. Ms. Ouimet is currently Vice President at ACT-for-Performance and provides support to public sector reforms in DRC and Mali.
Yiagadeesen (Teddy) Samy is an Associate Professor of International Affairs at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University, Ottawa. He has published widely on issues related to international economics and economic development. Some of his recent work has appeared in Third World Quarterly, International Interactions, and Journal of Conflict Resolution. He was the co-editor of the 2013 issue of Canada Among Nations on Canada-Africa relations and more recently co-authored the 2015 Africa Capacity Report on Capacity Imperatives for Domestic Resource Mobilization in Africa. His current research areas include state fragility, aid effectiveness, domestic resource mobilization and income inequality.
Conference Assistant
Babatunde Ojo is doctoral student at the Department of Geography and Environmental studies, Carleton University. He holds a Master’s degree in Environmental Management from Coventry University, United Kingdom. His current research involves investigating the dynamics of food security in sub-Saharan Africa. Mr. Ojo has participated in a number of research activities in Nigeria, including the Poverty Severity classification of thirteen (13) states and one-hundred and fifty eight (158) local government areas across Nigeria.
Master of Ceremonies:
Nduka Otiono is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of African Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa. He obtained his PhD in English from the University of Alberta where he won numerous awards including the Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Scholarship, and was nominated for the Governor General’s Gold Medalfor academic distinction. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Brown University where he was also appointed a Visiting Assistant Professor and a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at Carleton University. A fellow of the William Joiner Centre for War and Social Consequences, University of Massachusetts, Boston, his interdisciplinary research focuses on “street stories” or popular urban narratives in postcolonial Africa, and how they travel across multiple popular cultural platforms such as the news media, film, popular music, and social media. Also a writer, he is the author of The Night Hides with a Knife (short stories), which won the ANA/Spectrum Prize; Voices in the Rainbow (Poems), a finalist for the ANA/Cadbury Poetry Prize; Love in a Time of Nightmares (Poems) for which he was awarded the James Patrick Folinsbee Memorial Scholarship in Creative Writing. He has co-edited We-Men: An Anthology of Men Writing on Women (1998), and Camouflage: Best of Contemporary Writing from Nigeria (2006). In 2015 he was awarded a Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship. He is currently working on his first academic monograph, Street Stories in Africa.