The people behind the evidence.

Regina Mamidy Yillah is the Founder and Director of the Institute for Development (IfD), Sierra Leone. She brings more than thirty years of leadership in international development, with expertise spanning public health, education, research and evidence-informed policymaking. She founded IfD in 2013, after leading an international health organisation’s country programme in Sierra Leone, to build evaluation capacity and institutional memory that stay in the country (read the full story).

Her work centres on one question: how do decision-makers get the evidence they actually need? Her research focuses on the demand side of evidence-informed policy, helping governments and organisations turn a real problem into a question research can answer. That thinking underpins IfD’s National Evidence Summit and National Evidence Awards.

Regina is committed to the responsible use of artificial intelligence in research. She led the development of Sabi Salone, Sierra Leone’s digital repository of national policies, laws and evaluations, and is now driving Sabi Core, shared evidence infrastructure that lets real policy questions be framed, answered and kept up to date as new research emerges. Both are built so that people check the work, make the final judgements and can see how conclusions were reached.

She is a founding member of the Sierra Leone Research and Evidence Network and an Associate Editor of the journal Reproductive Health. She publishes as Yillah (earlier as Bash-Taqi) and divides her time between Freetown and the UK. Her work is guided by a commitment to strengthening African leadership in research, making knowledge more accessible and ensuring that evidence contributes to meaningful, sustainable development.

Public health · Education · International development · AI in research

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Dr John Alimamy Kabba is Research Project Manager at IfD. He began his career as an inspecting pharmacist at the Ministry of Health in Sierra Leone, and moved into a pharmacist and research and policy lead role after completing his PhD.

Qualifications

PhD in Pharmacy, Xi’an Jiaotong University

MSc Pharmacology, China Pharmaceutical University

BSc (Hons) Pharmacy, University of Sierra Leone

Pharmacy · Health policy · Health systems research

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Muallem Kamara is a Research Coordinator at the Institute for Development. He holds a Master’s degree in International Cooperation and Humanitarian Aid, as well as a Master’s in Research and Public Policy. His background is backed by more than a decade of experience in research, monitoring, evaluation, and project implementation within the health sector.

Qualifications

MA International Cooperation and Humanitarian Aid

MA Research and Public Policy (in progress)

Research · Monitoring and evaluation · Health sector programming

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Henrietta Koroma is a certified adult educator and holds a Masters in Gender Studies. Her extensive experience in action research adds depth to the team’s capabilities, particularly in gender studies.

Qualifications

MA Gender Studies

Certified adult educator

Gender studies · Action research · Adult education

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Richard Pambu holds a Masters in Educational Leadership and Policy, complemented by a first degree in Language Studies. He has taught French at all levels for almost a decade.

Qualifications

MA Educational Leadership and Policy

BA Language Studies

Education policy · Language studies

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Sheku Wulladeh is a researcher at IfD, contributing to evidence-based work that supports community development and policy change. Before joining IfD he worked as a field officer at OYA Microfinance and a sales agent at Africa Marketing Sierra Leone, building expertise across finance, field operations and marketing.

Qualifications

BSc Financial Services, University of Sierra Leone

Community development · Finance · Field operations

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Kandeh Paul Kamara is a development practitioner with expertise in community development and social impact initiatives, and extensive experience on projects focused on gender empowerment, youth engagement and sustainable development.

Community development · Gender empowerment · Youth engagement

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Erica Ruth Esther Bangura is a researcher at IfD. Formerly Production Manager at Hands of Hope Radio 100.5 FM and a two-time Human Trafficking Reporting Fellow, she combines research and media expertise in development focused work.

Qualifications

BEd (Hons) Early Childhood Care and Education

Early childhood development · Media and communications

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Augustus Osborne is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Development (IfD), Sierra Leone. He is a public health researcher and health systems practitioner. He works on maternal, child and reproductive health, and on how health systems in fragile and shock-prone settings cope with crises.

Augustus began his career in 2014 as an Ebola contact tracer for the Ministry of Health. He went on to enrol participants in the STRIVE Ebola vaccine trial and to supervise national polio vaccination campaigns. Those years taught him that evidence is useful only when it reaches the people running the health system at the point where they have to decide. He brought that conviction to IfD in 2022.

His work centres on one question: why do mothers and children in Sierra Leone still die of causes we know how to prevent, and what does the health system have to change to stop it? He answers it with national survey data and machine learning, alongside qualitative and policy research. He has published 212 peer-reviewed articles, 102 of them as sole or first author, in journals including Health Policy and Planning, BMJ Global Health and Global Health Action. He is also a Global Burden of Disease Senior Collaborator.

At IfD, Augustus is part of the ReBUILD for Resilience consortium, funded by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. He led its Sierra Leone study of aid cuts and health financing, published in Health Policy and Planning in 2026. He is Co-Principal Investigator on an FCDO-funded rapid evidence review of agriculture and food systems for nutrition, carried out with the Goa Institute of Management and the UCL EPPI-Centre. With Regina Mamidy Yillah, he works on the demand side of evidence-informed policy and on Sabi Core, IfD’s shared evidence infrastructure. Earlier IfD studies took him into maternal death surveillance and the exclusion of marginalised students from secondary school. He also co-led an ALIGN-funded study of Muslim religious leaders’ views on sexuality education.

Outside IfD, Augustus is Technical Fellow for Health Systems, Quality Improvement and Research at the Ministry of Health. In that role he is national technical lead on research on the Presidential 300 Days of Activism for Triple Zero. He is Lecturer I at the University of Management and Technology, Deputy Editor of Reproductive Health and a co-founder of the Sierra Leone Research and Evidence Alliance. He holds an MSc in Public Health and a BSc in Biological Sciences from Njala University, and is based in Freetown.

His work is guided by a belief that Sierra Leone’s own data, analysed by Sierra Leonean researchers, should shape the decisions that keep mothers and children alive. He gives his time to help early-career researchers in the country publish their work to an international standard.

Qualifications

MSc Public Health

BSc Biological Sciences, Njala University

Public health · Epidemiology · Health systems · Adolescent and women's health · Statistical analysis

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Anaïs Bash-Taqi is a researcher and communications officer at IfD, where she contributes to study design, data collection and analysis, and research write-ups. In her communications role she leads the development of content strategies, ensuring key audiences are engaged, and manages IfD’s digital presence including the affiliated Dr Dee YouTube channel and the IfD blog.

Her undergraduate dissertation examined how race, nationality and gender shape power dynamics between a leading Northern development organisation and its Southern partners, a commitment to intersectionality and decolonising aid she continues through her MSc at SOAS.

Qualifications

BA Geography, University of Cambridge

MSc International Development, SOAS University of London (in progress)

Qualitative research · Communications · Decolonising aid

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Emmanuel Foray is an educator and early childhood development specialist with more than fifteen years of experience in teaching, school leadership and education research in Sierra Leone. At IfD he leads stakeholder engagement for the THRIVE early childhood development research. He works closely with the Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary Education to bring research evidence into policy and practice. He also lectures at Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone, and has spent nearly a decade as Senior Lecturer and Head of the Early Childhood Care and Education Department at the Orthodox Christian College of West Africa.

Qualifications

MPhil Education (Pre-primary Education), Fourah Bay College (in progress)

MSc Educational Leadership and Management, Fourah Bay College

BEd (Hons) Early Childhood Care and Education, Fourah Bay College

Diploma in Early Childhood Care and Education, Milton Margai College of Education and Technology

Certificate in Foundational Learning in ECCE, BRAC University

Early childhood care and education · Stakeholder engagement · Education policy and research uptake · School leadership and teacher development · Curriculum development

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Issa Kanu is a market research associate at IfD. He is also a writer, poet development communicator.He has also worked as a project assistant, for Destination SL and a branding consultant for Cordaid SL.

Qualifications

BA (Hons) Mass Communication

BA (Hons) Tourism Management

Market research · Content creator · Media and communications

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Saidu Wurie Jalloh is a Researcher and Automation Lead at the Institute for Development in Freetown. He holds a BSc (Hons) in Mathematics (Statistics) and an MSc in Mathematics (Data Science).

He leads the design of quantitative data collection tools and internal systems to manage projects, staff time, and compliance, while working at the intersection of research and systems strengthening to improve internal workflows and data management practices.

Qualifications

BSc Statistics and Mathematics

MSc Data Science

Statistics · Data science · Research systems · Automation

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Mahmoud Gbessay holds a first class degree in Computer Science from Njala University, where his final-year project focused on using USSD to reach communities with maternal and public health information. At IfD he works across programme advocacy and digital delivery, connecting the institute’s research to the audiences and channels that can act on it.

Qualifications

BSc (First Class) Computer Science, Njala University

Computer science · Digital health · USSD systems · Public engagement

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Talib Deen is IfD’s HR and Admin Officer. Before joining IfD he spent eight years as HR Manager for an international NGO, and he brings diverse business and IT experience. In 2023 he completed training on the Research Administration and Management Programme sponsored by ReBUILD.

Human resources · Research administration · IT

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Melrose Jones-Asgill is an ACCA-qualified accountant with over 30 years of experience in the UK and Sierra Leone. She has a wealth of experience setting up and managing finance departments for start-ups, and specialises in designing efficient systems that enable organisations to grow.

Qualifications

ACCA qualified accountant

Financial management · Systems design

Oluwole Adrian Pratt is an accounting technician with experience across finance and accounting in both study and practice. His skills in digital information systems and computer science support organisational decision-making through computer-aided and interactive illustration backed by financial statistics.

Finance and accounting · Digital information systems

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Alusine Bangura is an Economics undergraduate at Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone, with practical experience in operations, research, data collection, participant recruitment and data management. He supports research and development activities at IfD.

Qualifications

BSc Economics (in progress)

Operations management · Research support · Data management · Survey data collection · Participant recruitment · Excel · KoboToolbox

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Lamrana Jalloh is a finance professional with over ten years of experience in banking, auditing, procurement and accounting.

Qualifications

ACCA Part 2 CAT (Certified Accounting Technician)

Certificate in Procurement

Banking · Auditing · Procurement · Accounting

Philip Amara holds an MPH, an MSc in Survey Methodology and an MSc in Statistics. He is proficient in data analysis with over 20 years of experience analysing national-level household survey data with complex sample design features, applying parametric and non-parametric methods for hypothesis testing in SPSS and SAS.

Qualifications

MPH

MSc Survey Methodology

MSc Statistics

Survey methodology · Statistical analysis · Complex sample design

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Dr Haja Wurie, formerly Research Lead at IfD, holds a PhD in Medicine. She is a highly experienced multidisciplinary researcher with over 40 academic publications.

Qualifications

PhD Medicine

Health systems research · Multidisciplinary research

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Prof Osman Alimamy Sankoh (Mallam O.), is a former Statistician General and CEO of Statistics Sierra Leone (Stats SL).

He is currently the Vice-Chair of the United Nations Statistical Commission. He served as Rapporteur of the UN Statistical Commission for two terms.

From April 2020 to June 2021, Prof Sankoh served Njala University, the second largest public university of Sierra Leone, as Acting Vice Chancellor and Principal. He now serves the university as an adjunct professor in the School of Community Health Sciences.

Before returning to Sierra Leone in 2018, he was the Executive Director of the INDEPTH Network of research centres running Health and Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS) and Comprehensive Health and Epidemiological Surveillance System (CHESS) sites in 20 countries in Africa, Asia and the Pacific.

He is currently a Mercator Fellow and Visiting Professor in the Heidelberg Institute of Global Health (HIGH) at the University of Heidelberg Medical School in Germany and holds a honorary full professorship position in the School of Public Health, Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, one of Africa’s topmost universities.

He is a member of several international scientific advisory boards including The Lancet Global Health, Global Health Action and Tropical Medicine and International Health.

His more than 120 peer-reviewed scientific publications have appeared in a range of international journals, with a current Google Scholar citation of 17,770 and h-index of 42, and has consistently been ranked as the topmost Sierra Leonean scientist in Sierra Leone since 2020.

Qualifications

PhD Applied Statistics

MSc Applied Statistics and Spatial Planning

BSc (Hons) Statistics and Spatial Planning

BSc Ed (Distinction)

Statistical analysis · Data dissemination · National development data · Applied statistics

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Mary Hodges is an experienced director with a history of working in non-profit and for-profit organisations, skilled in epidemiology, child and reproductive health, training, food security and fundraising. She serves as Principal Investigator at the Institute for Development and Adjunct Professor at Njala University, and was previously Country Director at Helen Keller International Sierra Leone for over thirteen years.

Qualifications

MRCP Paediatrics

MBBS

Hon DSc Parasitology

Epidemiology · Child and reproductive health · Food security · Training · Fundraising

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Dr Bintu Mansaray is Executive Director at IGCHR, where she co-leads participatory action research in social projects and development programmes, sets research policy, delivers staff training and develops grant proposals. Her research explores violence, gender and health, with particular emphasis on safeguarding and improving health outcomes for marginalised communities.

Qualifications

PhD Social Policy and Law (Violence and Gender)

MSc Tropical Paediatrics, Maternal and Child Health (Distinction)

International Postgraduate Paediatric Certificate

MBBS

Participatory action research · Gender-based violence · Safeguarding · Health systems · Stakeholder management · Grant proposal development

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Dr Ayesha Idriss is a pharmacist and multidisciplinary researcher. She was a key member of the team that conducted the Sierra Leone Trial to Introduce a Vaccine against Ebola, and has contributed to the NIHR Research Unit on Health in Situations of Fragility.

Qualifications

PhD Global Health

Pharmacy · Vaccine trials · Health systems research

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Dr Mohamed Gibril Sesay teaches Sociology at Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone, where he was also educated. With over twenty-five years of academic and research experience, he specialises in political sociology, development studies, rural livelihoods, and youth and gender issues. He is also a published author and poet; his most recent non-fiction book, Civic Society in Africa: Models, History and Explosions of Civic Actions in Sierra Leone, was published by SLWS.

Qualifications

PhD Sociology

Political sociology · Development studies · Rural livelihoods · Youth and gender · Sociological theory · Governance · Post-conflict recovery

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Sarah Jessica Kamara is Finance Officer of the CHESS Project. She holds a National Diploma in Banking and Finance from Milton Margai College of Education and Technology, now Milton Margai Technical University, and graduated from the Institute of Public Administration and Management at the University of Sierra Leone in 2017 with a BSc in Business Administration. She is currently a second-year MBA student at IPAM, and has many years of experience in the banking industry.

Qualifications

MBA, IPAM, University of Sierra Leone (in progress)

BSc Business Administration, IPAM, University of Sierra Leone

National Diploma in Banking and Finance, Milton Margai

Banking · Finance