Learning Days 16: EGAP West Africa Regional Hub Learning Days Workshop 2025

Kevin (Vin) Arceneaux is Director of the CEVIPOF and Professor of Political Science. He studies how people form beliefs and attitudes about politics and, ultimately, make political decisions. His research focuses on how social psychological factors influence and shape people’s motives to consume (or not consume) particular forms of news media, defend (or fail to defend) particular beliefs and attitudes as well as behave in particular ways.

Arsene Brice Bado is Professor of Political Science and Research Director at CERAP, at the Universite Jesuite in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire. He is the EGAP West Africa Regional Hub lead on activities related to democracy and conflict in West Africa as well as methods training for Francophone West African researchers. His research focuses on democracy, ethnic pluralism, electoral processes in conflict-torn societies, and foreign aid in Africa.

Isabelle Becho is an economist with a doctorate in economics from the Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny and a diploma in Applied Development Economics from Université Laval. A lecturer and researcher at the Université Virtuelle de Côte d’Ivoire (UVCI) and a researcher at the Cellule d’Analyse de Politique Economique du CIRES (CAPEC), she specialises in public policy impact assessment, gender analysis, poverty, vulnerability and inclusive finance. She has worked with international institutions such as UNFEMMES, USAID, IDRC and PEP on projects related to women’s empowerment, COVID-19 and the reduction of violent extremism. Isabelle also teaches microeconomics, data analysis and research methodologies at various levels.

Alyssa René Heinze is a PhD Candidate in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley and a Research Associate at the Center on the Politics of Development. She researches gendered understandings of: the political economy of local development, political inequality, and the consequences of climate change using mixed (in-depth qualitative, experimental, and machine-learning) methods. Her dissertation project investigates the role of state and community control of natural resources in entrenching patriarchal gender relations. Her research is located in the Global South, with a focus on India.

Nahomi Ichino (PhD, Stanford University) is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Emory University. She is co-Director of Methods and Trainings for EGAP, leading the Learning Days workshops. Her research interests focus primarily on ethnic politics, voter behavior, and political parties in developing democracies, with a regional specialization in sub-Saharan Africa. She also conducts research on methodology for comparative politics. Her work has been published in American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, and other outlets.

Yannick Brice Kouogueng Y. is a Senior Economist working for the Ministry of Economy and Planning. He has been serving in that institution since 2014 after he graduated in Economics in 2010 and then in Demography in 2014. He has been working especially on the elaboration and the evaluation of economic development policies. His major accomplishments involve a major contribution in the evaluation of the Growth and Employment Strategy of Cameroon in 2018 and a key role in the elaboration of the National Development Strategy for Cameroon in 2019 and 2020. Yannick’s daily tasks include the analysis of macro and microeconomic data in order to assess the gaps between the objectives and the achievements in different sectors (governance, infrastructure, industry, education, etc). Since his recent graduation in Master in Policy Economics at the Center for Development Economics at Williams College in Massachusetts in 2023, Yannick is an active member of the Laboratory of Econometrics and Applied Economics of the University of Yaounde II in Cameroon, in addition to his position at the Minister of Economy. He is involved in several research projects carried on by that laboratory. His role in these projects mainly focuses on the design of methodology and the estimation of econometric models. On top of that, his main responsibility in the lab is to pin down actionable economic policy recommendations from the results of research, and to improve the fitness of research issues to development policy needs.

Gareth Nellis is an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, where he specializes in comparative politics, South Asia, and intergroup relations. One line of his work examines the rise of religious nationalism; the other details the political marginalization of internal migrants. His current agenda addresses bottom-up ways to structure intergroup interactions to create “bridging” social capital.

Yabo Gwladys Vidogbena is pursuing a doctoral degree in Economics at the University of Houston. Her research interests lie in development economics, with a particular focus on education. Her current work aims to contribute to understanding the causes of low learning outcomes in low-income countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.

Christelle Zozoungbo is a PhD candidate in the Department of Economics at Pennsylvania State University. She specializes in structural and applied econometrics/causal inference and development economics (Household Economics and Human Capital). Her research focuses on socio-economic dynamics, intergenerational educational persistence, intra-household inequality, and gender disparities. She is currently a World Bank Development Research Group consultant as a WBG-Africa Fellow, working on Early Childhood Development programs in India.