Partnership Africa Canada - About Us

Staff

Bernard Taylor
Executive Director
btaylor@pacweb.org

Josée Létourneau
Finance and Administration
jletourneau@pacweb.org

Susanne Emond
Programme Manager
semond@pacweb.org

Engudai Bekele
Coordinator, Africa Bureau
pac@ethionet.et

Ousmane Dème
Coordinator of Publish What You Pay - Canada
odeme@pwyp.ca

Bernard Taylor
Bernard Taylor is Executive Director of Partnership Africa Canada. In the early 1990s, he was a Programme Officer with PAC when the organization managed a large project fund for Africa. Previously, he worked for eight years with NGOs in rural and urban Africa - in Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Mali and Senegal – as a volunteer and in managing volunteer technical programmes. He has visited all of Africa’s regions in the course of his work. He co-authored a study of northern Somalia in 1999: Peace and Development in Northern Somalia - Opportunities and Challenges.

Josée Létourneau
Josée Létourneau is responsible for finances and administration for Partnership Africa Canada. She brings to PAC a strong background in finance and administration within a variety of non-profit organizations as well as experience as the president, secretary, and treasurer of a Board of Directors. She created and participated in international internships to Togo, Mali, Nicaragua and Spain. She was also a volunteer with CECI in Nepal for two years during which time she worked with the Nepalese government on water supply systems for the rural Himalayan regions.

Susanne Emond
Susanne Emond is Programme Manager with Partnership Africa Canada. She coordinates the implementation of various peace and human security projects, including work on the Kimberley Process and the International Conference for Peace in the Great Lakes Region of Africa. She has several years experience in natural resources management and development, in particular with conflict resolution, facilitation of participatory processes, capacity-building, as well as project coordination and evaluation. Her experience includes working with communities and non-governmental organizations, and working with governments in Asia, Latin America, North America and Africa.

Engudai Bekele
Engudai Bekele is Coordinator of the Africa Bureau of Partnership Africa Canada, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She worked previously as Executive Secretary and Organization and Methods Officer for the Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation. She then joined the Department of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, Addis Ababa University, as Program Officer of the National Health Development Network (NHDN). Engudai was part of a team of relief workers at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) during the 1984-86 drought in Ethiopia. She then served for nine years in the Information Division of the International Livestock Centre for Africa (ILCA). She is a member of two national NGO Boards.

Ousmane Dème
Ousmane Déme is the Coordinator of the Publish What You Pay - Canada coalition. He is also currently completing a PhD in International Relations at the School of Political Studies of the University of Ottawa. His doctoral research is on the role of World Bank in the Chad-Cameroon oil project. He has worked with Partnership Africa Canada as a researcher on the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM). In 2005, PAC published his study Between Hope and Scepticism: Civil society and the African Peer Review Mechanism. He recently prepared a training Manual on the APRM for the UN Economic Commission for Africa. He worked previously with the Ema Invest Foundation in Geneva, where he was responsible for the Partnerships and Investment in Africa department, and for the local government of Geneva as a social advisor for African refugee claimants..