Dr Mohamed Cherif Diarra

Board Chair

Mohamed Chérif Diarra is an education specialist and a citizen of the Republic of Mali, West Africa. He received a doctorate degree in Education Finance from Louisiana State University (LSU), Baton Rouge, Louisiana, United States of America.

He worked in various capacities for different organizations around the world: the Government of Mali; the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) at the American mission in Bamako, as Technical Advisor on Education. He also worked for the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) as the Coordinator of its Working Group on Education Finance hosted by the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), a pan African research organization based in Dakar, Senegal, West Africa. He became a member of the staff of various international organizations such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as senior Program Specialist seconded to the African Union Commission (AUC) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

He served as the Coordinator of African Development Bank sponsored ADEA Working Group on Education Management and Policy Support in Africa. 

Diarra also sat on the governing boards and scientific committees of various educational organizations across the continent namely The African Network Campaign for Education for All (ANCEFA), the Educational Research Network for West and Central Africa (ERNWACA), E-Learning for Education and Science for Africa (ELES4Africa) and Distance Education Africa (DeA). He chaired numerous technical sessions, board and scientific commissions meetings and most importantly authored several book chapters and journal articles. He retired in 2015 and has been since then actively involved in consultancy around the world. He is currently a Bamako resident in Mali, West Africa.