Deo-Gracias HOUNDOLO is the Regional Coordinator of the West African Capacity Building and Impact Evaluation Program (WACIE). He works on policy analysis, design of monitoring and evaluation, and program impact evaluation. His areas of research interest cover: analysis of poverty dynamics, rural development assessment, gender sensitive development analyses, and design of monitoring and evaluation methodologies.
He is a Lead Trainer for the Program in Rural Monitoring and Evaluation (PRiME), the Partnership for African Social and Governance Research (PASGR) and the National School of Administration of the University of Abomey-Calavi (Benin) in subjects related to policy evaluation.
Over the past few years, he has worked to promote rigorous evaluations and the design of public policies based on evidence (evidence-informed policy), with organizations such as the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie), the World Bank (PREM , AFTAR, Gender-Lab), the UNOCHA Pool Fund, the African School of Economics, IFAD, the MasterCard Foundation, GiZ-Benin, the Partnership for Economic Policy, Mathematica Policy Research, and also government organizations in Benin, South Africa, Niger, among others.
He holds an Engineering Degree in Agronomy (University of Abomey-Calavi, Benin), a master’s degree in Agricultural Development (University of Copenhagen, Denmark) and has completed a master degree microprogram in Applied Development Economics from Laval University. He is a PhD candidate in Development Economics at the International Institute of Social Studies - Erasmus University Rotterdam in The Netherlands.