Mr. Olufunso Somorin

Olufunso Somorin (PhD) is a Regional Principal Officer at the African Development Bank. He leads the Bank’s work on climate change and green growth in the 13 countries that consist the Bank’s Eastern African region. This includes supporting countries’ access to climate finance for implementing their Paris Agreement commitments, and mainstreaming climate change in all Bank policies and programs. In addition, he leads policy dialogues with national/regional governments on developing policy frameworks for managing local and regional economic and social issues, regional integration, food security, climate change, resilience and inclusive growth. Between 2013 and 2017, he coordinated the Bank’s work on addressing fragility and building resilience within the Horn of Africa region. In the last 8 years, he has been directly involved in the design, appraisal and supervision of more than 130 development projects worth about USD 9.41 billion.  

 

Prior to joining the Bank in 2011, Somorin was an Associate Professional Officer with the Center for International Forestry Research, based in Cameroon. He led several policy-relevant research analyses on mainstreaming climate change adaptation and mitigation into national development policies of six Central African countries. He has published more than 25 peer-reviewed articles on climate policy, natural resources management and environmental governance in many leading scientific journals. Somorin holds a PhD in International Environmental Policy from Wageningen University, the Netherlands. As an Erasmus Mundus Scholar, he holds two Masters’ degrees from Finland and Netherlands. He has undertaken several executive educations in many leading institutions: Bradford, Cambridge and Oxford Universities in the UK. He gives guest-lectures at the University of Guelph (Canada), African Leadership University (Rwanda) and Strathmore University (Kenya).