Essosolim Apollinaire Abi

Apollinaire Abi is the co-founder of NawiriTech, a data science education platform that expands access to digital skills and promotes evidence-based decision-making to young professionals across Africa. They provide free training through in-person workshops and virtual fellowships designed to prepare learners to apply data and technology skills to implement solutions to a specific social impact project in their communities. Under Apollinaire's leadership, NawiriTech received more than 1,300 applications from 28 African countries in its first year, training more than 125 young professionals who now deploy data strategies across agriculture, education, healthcare, and public policy.

Seeing effective data management as a key to actionable insights that spur change, Apollinaire is now focused on expanding NawiriTech's work to data training for social impact organizations and state agencies to empower African countries to build locally led solutions that fit the needs of their communities. Apollinaire plans to leverage insights from the program's guest speakers and access to seasoned social change leaders to learn how to develop a replicable framework that maintains a focus on local needs and contexts while expanding across Togo, Ghana, and Kenya to establish evidence-based data as a cornerstone of public transformation.

Apollinaire is an Obama Foundation Scholar and a second-year student in the Master of Science in Computational Analysis and Public Policy (MSCAPP) program at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy. He holds a BSc (Honours) in mathematics from Ashoka University and is a graduate of the African Leadership Academy. He is the recipient of the Kabir Banerjee Predoctoral Fellowship through the Weiss Fund, which he completed with the Kevin Xu Initiative at the University of Chicago.