Speaker Bio

Dr. Olufunso Somorin 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 of the Bank’s East African region. This includes supporting countries’ access to climate finance for implementing their climate actions, and mainstreaming climate change in all Bank policies and programs. He also leads policy dialogues with national/regional governments on developing policy frameworks for managing local/regional economic and social issues, climate change, renewable energy, 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. In the last 10 years, he has been directly involved in the design, appraisal, and supervision of more than 180 development projects worth about USD 17.4 billion. Prior to joining the Bank in 2011, Somorin was an Associate Professional Officer with the Center for International Forestry Research, supporting climate-informed policies of six Central African countries through research. He has published more than 20 peer-reviewed articles on climate policy, natural resources management and environmental governance in many scientific journals.

Somorin holds a PhD in International Environmental Policy from Wageningen University, the Netherlands. He is an alumnus of executive education from Bradford, Cambridge and Oxford Universities in the UK. He gives guest-lectures at King’s College London, African Leadership University (Rwanda) and Strathmore University (Kenya). Somorin is currently a Non-Resident Fellow at the Africa Policy Research Institute (Berlin) and a recipient of the Eisenhower Fellowships (US) for his work on climate change in East Africa.