Adou Sonia holds a Ph.D. in Applied Economy from the Inter-university Postgraduate Program in economics called “One Hundred Women PhD graduates by 2025 in French-speaking Africa”. She is passionate about food and nutrition security and rural development, including the development of food and agriculture value chains. Her research focused on the contribution of governance, agri-food global value chain, and financial inclusion in the fight against food insecurity in Sub-Saharan Africa. She obtained her master’s degree in Rural Economy at the University Felix Houphouet Boigny (Abidjan), after which she joined the CGIAR’s “Humidtropics” project for the analysis of cassava value chain in Southwest Cote d’Ivoire.

In 2022, She participated in the summer school organized by Kiel Institute and the University of Lomé on Agricultural transformation and global value chain in West Africa. In May 2023, she successfully took part in the postgraduate training course “Food Chain in Agriculture” (at the University of Applied Science, Germany) and the TROPENTAG conference in Berlin on the topic “Competing pathways for equitable food systems transformation: trade-offs and synergies”.

She is currently working with the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS) to develop a research proposal on the Agri-food global value chain in Sub-Saharan Africa. She has clearly understood that the success of applied economic research depends on a good understanding of the challenges faced by local populations, hence her commitment to rural communities. She is confident that to achieve food security, the transformation of our food systems is essential with a particular focus on cross-cutting issues such as climate change, biodiversity, and gender inequalities.