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It is my pleasure to announce the appointment of Professor Nyovani Janet Madise as the Director of Research and Development Policy at the African Institute for Development Policy (AFIDEP). Nyovani brings to AFIDEP a wealth of expertise and experience in research, capacity building, and policy engagement on a wide range of development issues, including population change, urbanization, HIV/AIDS and reproductive, child, maternal, and adolescent health. In addition to leading our research programmes at AFIDEP, Nyovani will lead our Malawi office, where she will be based. Nyovani’s appointment is effective February 1, 2018.

Before joining AFIDEP, Nyovani was a Professor of Demography and Social Statistics at the University of Southampton. She studied mathematics and economics at the University of Malawi and later obtained her masters’ and PhD degrees from the University of Southampton. In 2016, she received an honorary higher doctoral degree (DSc) from the University of Aberdeen in recognition of her research. Nyovani has previously worked as a Lecturer at the University of Malawi and as a Senior Research Scientist at the African Population and Health Research Center in Kenya. She has held many senior management roles including Associate Dean Research in a large faculty at Southampton; Deputy Head of School; University Lead for Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion; Director of Public Policy, and Director of the Centre for Global Health, Population, Poverty, and Policy at Southampton.

Nyovani’s current research is on the social determinants of health in the specific areas of maternal and child health, adolescent sexual and reproductive health, family planning, and food and nutritional security. The majority of her work involves advanced statistical analyses of large, nationally representative data. Two new areas of research for her are women’s empowerment and interdisciplinary work on the links between population, poverty and the environment. Nyovani has over 100 peer-reviewed research publications.

Nyovani sits on the advisory committees of research funders such as DFID, ESRC, Medical Research Council, Research Council Norway and the NWO-WOTRO of the Netherlands. She is a member of the World Health Organization’s Strategic Advisory Group for Malaria Eradication. She has previously served on the Wellcome Trust Public Health and Tropical Medicine Interview Committee, UK Commonwealth Scholarship Commission, and as a member of the Guttmacher Institute Board.

We at AFIDEP are thrilled to have such a world-class scholar and believer in Africa’s development join our team and we wish her well as she transitions from her previous work to playing a role in promoting AFIDEP’s mission of ‘making evidence matter in African driven development’.

Eliya Msiyaphazi Zulu

Executive Director, AFIDEP