ADDIS ABABA URBAN AGE TASK FORCE

Dereje Fekadu is the Special Chief of Staff, Mayor’s Office, Addis Ababa City Administration. He was appointed member of cabinet by the Addis Ababa City Council and was previously the Commissioner of the Addis Ababa City Government Plan and Development Commission. Dereje has also served as lecturer and researcher at Addis Ababa University and has accumulated substantial experience in leadership, research and consultancy. He is a UNCTAD certified National Trainer for Entrepreneurship Training Workshop and holds an MSc in Development Economics. He is a registered professional Economist and a member of the Ethiopian Economic Association.

Philipp Rode is Executive Director of LSE Cities and Senior Research Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He co-convenes the LSE Sociology Course on ‘City Making: The Politics of Urban Form’. As researcher and consultant he has been directing interdisciplinary projects comprising urban governance, transport, city planning and urban design since 2003. The focus of his current work is on green economy strategies in cities which includes co-directing the cities workstream of the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate. He has previously led the coordination of the chapters on Green Cities and Green Buildings for the United Nations Environment Programme’s Green Economy Report. Rode is Executive Director of the Urban Age Programme and since 2005 organised Urban Age conferences in over a dozen world cities bringing together political leaders, city mayors, urban practitioners, private sector representatives and academic experts. He manages the Urban Age research efforts and recently co-authored ‘Cities and Energy: Urban morphology and heat energy demand’ (2014), ‘Going Green: How cities are leading the green economy’ (2013), ‘Transforming Urban Economies’ (2012) and ‘The Global MetroMonitor’ (2010). He has previously worked on several multidisciplinary research and consultancy projects in New York and Berlin and was awarded the Schinkel Urban Design Prize 2000

Elias Yitbarek Alemayehu is Associate Professor at Ethiopian Institute of Architecture, Building Construction and City Development (EiABC), Addis Ababa University. He is the Founder of EiABC’s Housing Chair and its Masters program in ‘Housing and Sustainable Development’. Elias was the Research Director of EiABC and the President of the Association of Ethiopian Architects. His research background includes projects relating to themes of housing, urban resilience and urban design. He has also published writings on these topics, including acting as co-editor and author of the book The Transformation of Addis Ababa: A Multiform African City (2018).

Elleni Ashebir is Program Manager for Cities and Urban Mobility at WRI Ross Centre for Sustainable Cities where she collaborates with urban development and mobility teams to shape the cities program in Africa. Elleni has rich experience in shaping Ethiopia’s urban development and has worked at national, regional and city-level government. She has also worked closely with local communities and vulnerable groups to help ensure socially equitable, environmentally sustainable and economically viable development. Before joining World Resources Institute (WRI), Elleni managed a private consulting practice in Addis. Her academic background includes planning and management of urban development.

Ricky Burdett is Professor of Urban Studies at LSE and Director of the Urban Age and LSE Cities, a global centre of research and teaching at LSE which received the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education 2016-18. He is a member of the Mayor of London’s Cultural Leadership Board, Council Member of the Royal College of Art and a Trustee of the Norman Foster Foundation. He was Director of the Venice International Architecture Biennale and Curator of the Global Cities Exhibition Tate Modern in London. He was a member of the UK Government Airport Commission (2012-2015) and a member of UK Government’s Urban Task Force. In 2014, Burdett was a Visiting Professor in Urban Planning and Design at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University and Global Distinguished Professor at New York University (2010-2014). Alongside his academic activities, Burdett acts as a consultant to national and city governments, private companies and philanthropic agencies. He was Chief Adviser on Architecture and Urbanism for the 2012 London Olympics and Adviser on Architecture and Urbanism, Mayor of London (2001-2006). He is co-editor of ‘Shaping Cities in an Urban Age’ (2018), ‘The SAGE Handbook of the 21st Century’ (2017), ‘Living in the Endless City’ (2011) and ‘The Endless City’ (2007). Burdett was appointed CBE in the 2017 New Year’s Honours list for services to urban design and planning.

Anka Derichs is a spatial planner, expert in urban development, local governance and climate action, urban mobility and municipal finance. She has 20 years of practical and academic experience in Africa, the Middle East, Europe and Asia. She is a senior planning officer within the competence centre for urban development at the Deutsche Gesellschaft für internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH. She is coordinating the GIZ project IBA Africa (from German: Internationale Bauausstellung – international building exhibition), which is implemented in partnership with the Task Force and the African Centre for Cities, Cape Town. She holds a doctorate from the Technical University of Dortmund, Faculty of Spatial Planning in Germany.

Timnit Eshetu is CEO at Addis Ababa City Administration Construction Enterprise. Prior to this, she was Director General at the Addis Ababa City Administration Infrastructure Coordination and Building Permit Authority. In 2014, she graduated with a Bachelor of Architecture from Mekelle University in Ethiopia. Before joining Addis Ababa City Administration, she worked as an architect amd project manager for a consultancy firm. She has been a member and executive committee of the Association of Ethiopian Architects and served as a lecturer at the Ethiopian Institute of Architecture and Building Construction, Addis Ababa University.

Brett is a former Member of the Mayoral Committee for Transport and Urban Development in the City of Cape Town. Brett’s portfolio was created in January 2017, following a restructuring of the City’s administration, to bring alignment between Transport, Spatial Planning and Housing. The overarching aim was to transform the spatial form of the city which still exhibits the apartheid spatial logic of segregation. Brett is a lawyer by profession and has served as an elected public representative since 2009. He has been part of the City’s Mayoral Committee since June 2010, initially serving as a member responsible for Community Services until May 2011 when he took over the transport portfolio. He is currently a Member of the Provincial Parliament in the Western Cape Province.

Olusola Ikuforiji is an environment and water resources professional at the African Development Bank (AfDB) in Abidjan, Côte D’Ivoire, where she has worked in different capacities applying an environmental sustainability and climate resilience lens to investment projects spanning the water and agriculture sectors. In her current role, she is contributing to the development of water infrastructure projects that address climate resilience and advance sustainable management of water resources in sub-Saharan Africa. She has developed keen interest in the urban space and motivated to understand how resilience and sustainability can be forged in African cities. Ikuforiji aims to promote integrated and inclusive infrastructure development in urban areas of Africa. Prior to joining the AfDB, she worked with the World Bank in Washington DC as a water resources management specialist.

Clarisse Linke has been involved in planning and implementing social policies and programs since 2001. From 2006-2011, she was a Director at the Bicycling Empowerment Network Namibia (BEN Namibia), where she played a key role in the expansion of BEN Namibia’s activities. Clarisse joined the Institute for Transportation & Development Policy (ITDP) Brazil in early 2012. ITDP promotes transport solutions that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution, while improving urban livability and economic opportunity. Clarisse has received numerous accolades for her work including being recognised as a “Remarkable Women in Transport” by the Transformative Urban Mobility Initiative (TUMI) in 2019.

Elisabeth Mansfeld has been responsible for the project area Cities at Alfred Herrhausen Gesellschaft in Germany since 2017. This project focuses on promoting impactful solutions that foster integrative urban governance. In cooperation with different partners and various schemes, the project supports cities with their planning and development processes and with their role as actors in shaping global governance. Prior to this, Elisabeth spent nine years as a project manager in the Chief Operating Office of Deutsche Bank’s Asset Management division. And as an expert for microfinancing, she has supervised projects in China and Mexico.

Michael von der Muehlen is a German planner and civil servant with an academic background in spatial planning. From 2002 until 2014 von der Mühlen was city director, executive officer for planning, construction and environment, and deputy mayor of Gelsenkirchen. In 2014 he was appointed State Secretary of the Ministry for Construction, Housing, Urban Development and Traffic of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, a position from which he retired in 2017. Mr. von der Mühlen was closely involved in the preparation and implementation of the International Building Exhibition (IBA) “Emscher Park” during the structural transformation of the post-industrial Ruhr Area.

Jennifer Semakula Musisi is a Ugandan lawyer and public administrator. As the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative City Leader in Residence, Jennifer Musisi plays a key role in advising on the design of Bloomberg Harvard programming, with a particular emphasis on programming for cities outside of the United States. From 2011 to 2018, she served as the first Executive Director of the Kampala Capital City Authority– established to administer Uganda’s Capital City on behalf of the Central Government. Musisi made enormous strides and exerted tremendous efforts towards the ongoing transformation of Kampala Capital City. Her achievements have become a benchmark for many upcoming municipalities in East Africa and beyond, and have been recognised with numerous awards.

Henk Ovink was appointed in 2015 by the Dutch Cabinet as the first Special Envoy for International Water Affairs. Henk served on President Obama’s Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force. He developed and led the ‘Rebuild by Design’ competition and initiated the National Disaster Resilience Competition. Henk teaches at Harvard GSD, the London School of Economics and the University of Groningen. His book – written with Jelte Boeijenga – “Too Big. Rebuild by Design: A Transformative Approach to Climate Change” explores his work for the Obama Administration. In 2018 Henk was awarded an honorary membership from the Royal Instítute of Engineers of the Netherlands.

Kecia Rust is the Executive Director and founder of the Centre for Affordable Housing Finance in Africa (CAHF, www.housingfinanceafrica.org). She is a housing policy specialist and has worked with

finance in Africa for the past 20 years. She was the Housing Finance Coordinator at the FinMark Trust from 2003-2014, from where CAHF was established. Over the span of her career, Kecia has consulted and undertaken research in affordable housing finance, residential property assets and property markets, rental and social housing, and the creation of sustainable human settlements, among other issues.

Semere Jelalu is Deputy General Director of Addis Ababa City Traffic Management Agency. He is responsible for the overall planning, coordinating and management of the traffic management operational task of Addis Ababa City. He has also served as design director of Addis Ababa City Roads Authority which brought him extended experience in urban road design. His background is in Civil Engineering, and he holds a postgraduate diploma in project management and MSc in construction technology and management.

Jagan Shah is the Senior Infrastructure Adviser in the Department for International Development (DFID) at the British High Commission in New Delhi. Since his early days as a consultant in built heritage management and later as the head of several organisations, he has been performing the role of change-agency by delivering innovative policies and projects in the urban sector. He has extensive experience in influencing policy and action by facilitating dialogue on urban planning and governance issues between and within governments, city leaders, donors, civil society, and the private sector. He studied Architectural Design from the School of Planning & Architecture in New Delhi and Architectural History & Theory at the University of Cincinnati and Columbia University.

Marc Steinlin is the founder and managing partner of IngeniousPeoplesKnowledge Consultants (I-P-K), a Cape Town-based boutique consulting firm. I-P-K specialises in designing and facilitating participatory transformation processes in the public sector and international development. In the past 13 years, he has advised a wide range of clients including UN specialised agencies, bilateral development agencies and international NGOs. He advises by applying an approach that puts the complex nature of human systems, diversity management and participation at its centre. He has worked in many programmes addressing the improvement of governance systems (local and national in a broad range of African countries.

Zeleke Teferi is a water resource management expert with 25 years of experience in environmental safeguards, water quality management, and design of water treatment and disposal processes. He has participated in a wide range of projects, including: the Addis Ababa Source to Tap and Back (S2TB) and Water Safety Plan preparation; surface water supply, sewerage system, and wastewater treatment plant design for Mekelle, Tigray; the Rift Valley Lakes Basin Integrated Watershed Management Master Plan study; and the Addis-Adama Water Resources Management and Protection Framework preparation project. He holds an MSc in Water Resource Management from Delft and a postgraduate diploma from Bremen University, Germany, in wastewater treatment and disposal.

Cecilia Vaca Jones is the Programme Director at the Bernard van Leer Foundation, a Dutch foundation devoted to global work in early childhood matters, where she is responsible for the management and implementation of a global strategy. One of her main objectives is to help scale effective programs and policies where city leaders, urban planners, architects, and innovators experience the city from 95cm (the height of a healthy three-year-old child) to change the landscapes and opportunities that shape young children’s lives. Prior to joining the Foundation, she was the Coordinating Minister of Social Development of Ecuador and has over 15 years of experience managing social development policies and programmes.

Hailu Worku is currently a Professor of Urban Environmental planning, Chair of Environmental Planning and Landscape Design and Deputy Scientific Director at the Ethiopian Institute of Architecture, Building Construction and City Development of Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. Presently, he leads and conducts research on environmental planning and management with particular emphasis on improving resource efficiency, environmental quality, hazard resilience, and sustainability of urban areas of Ethiopia. He has served in high government positions for over 25 years before joining Addis Ababa University. He is the author of numerous policy and strategy documents, scholarly articles, books and research and technical reports.