Director for Africa Programmes

Emma Orefuwa brings with her 14 years of Public Health program management experience and has worked extensively in Africa, Asia and Europe. Her first degree was in Biochemical Sciences at the University of Salford in 2001. She then went on to study a Master of Science in the Biology and Control of Disease Vectors at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (2002)  and subsequently, a Masters in Public Health from Kings College (University of London) in 2009.

She has held a number of high profile project and programme management roles within the UK National health service, International Development, and Global Health sectors. Her most recent apointment was as Strategic Operations Consultant and Programme Manager for Connecting Organisations for Regional Disease Surveillance (CORDS) France, a network of regional disease surveillance networks networks to improve global capacity to respond to infectious diseases.

Emma has extensive experience managing multi-country Maternal, Newborn and Child Health programmes for the African Medical Research Foundation (AMREF Health Africa, UK) and has led the implementation of Diaspora development programmes at the African Foundation for Development (AFFORD). Her research has spanned her diverse range of interests; from carrying out susceptibility studies of the mosquito vector Culex quinquefasciatus to local strains of the Lymphatic filariasis  parasite Wuchereria bancrofti in Nigeria, to seeking to gain a deeper understanding of ways in which to engage young African diaspora in the development of Africa.

As a second generation African diasporan of Nigerian and Seychellois descent, Emma has a passion for supporting Africans to act as agents of change, and for facilitating African solutions to African problems. It was during her time working as a co-organiser for the European Mosquito Research Association annual conference in 2009, that she decided with fellow African entomologists, to co-found the Pan African Mosquito Association (PAMCA), an African-led network of scientists and Public Health professionals dedicated to identifying unified approaches to fighting vector-borne disease across the African continent.

Emma is Director of Programmes, Africa, with responsibility for supporting GAFFI’s Ambassadors, regional networks and programme development and monitoring.