Abera Tola Gada
Abera Tola Gada is a Synergos Senior Fellow and Synergos’ Regional Director, Ethiopia.
Prior to joining Synergos staff in 2011, he was Regional Director of Oxfam America for the Horn of Africa Program. Abera joined Oxfam in 2000 first as a consultant, country director and now as a regional director. As the Horn of Africa region is one of the most poverty stricken and conflict suffering areas in the world, Abera led the agency’work for change in the life of the poor and marginalized.
Prior to this role, Abera was the founder and executive director of HUNDEE, a well-known local development organization in Ethiopia. He worked for the Canadian International Development Agency as a consultant to evaluate its Good Governance and Democracy Fund distributed to government, INGOs and NGOs in Ethiopia. Abera was a senior program officer for Inter Africa Group, a regional NGO dedicated to peace and development in the African continent. He also worked as a coordinator for the advocacy network of six local NGOs, which was formed for promoting democracy, civic education and election monitoring in Ethiopia. Abera created a consortium of civil society organizations to coordinate the first Ethiopian election in 1995 and dispatched more than two thousand election monitors to all parts of the country.
Listen to Abera talking about climate change and sustainable development.
Abera received a BA from Addis Ababa University in Business Administration, a Certificate from Open University in Management of Non-profit Organizations, and an MPA from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
