Dr. Metolo Foyet

Dr. Metolo Foyet is a Non-Resident Associate at the Nkafu Policy Institute. She is a Human Geographer, UNESCO-trained World Heritage Professional, Agricultural Value Chain Expert and Conservation Equity and Safeguards Specialist with 15 years of accumulated experience working in Sub-Saharan Africa and North America. She is passionate about meaningful institutional innovation, livelihoods enhancement in economically marginalized regions, and the amplification of rightsholders’ voices in conservation through alternative imaginaries (Abundant Intelligences, 4IR, art, storytelling, and other non-binary approaches). Prior to receiving her PhD in Geography at the University of Florida, she spent a decade of practice at the intersection of rural development, frugal entrepreneurship and social justice, implementing community development and outreach programs, and bridging the gap between rural and global communities by leveraging formal education and technical and vocational education and training (TVET).

Dr. Foyet has previously served as a Consultant for organizations such as The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and Competitiveness in Washington, D.C., the Commonwealth Secretariat in London, and the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) in Nairobi. She also worked with Plan International’s West and Central Africa Regional Office, and gained experience with the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) in New York through NAPS (Numbers and People Synergy), an Australian consultancy focused on bridging the gap between data and inclusive policy to promote social development.

In addition, Dr. Foyet was a Research Fellow at the African Centre for a Green Economy in Cape Town, a Fruit Procurement Manager for a large British FMCG group, a Country Risk Analyst at Songhai Advisory, and a Global Affairs and Diplomacy Analyst at the Canadian International Council (CIC) in Toronto. She has also served as a Human Rights Advocate at the West African Civil Society Institute (WACSI) in Accra and the Community Leaders Network (CLN) of Southern Africa in Windhoek.

Her advocacy experience includes serving as an Advocacy and Lobbying Officer at Resource Africa’s Europe office, a Leader of Liberty with Students For Liberty in Virginia, and an Al Gore Climate Reality Leader. Additionally, she has served in the Special Operations Department at the office of the President of Ghana, and worked as a Technical Translator for the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) and for Jean Claude Bazin, a presidential candidate in Haiti.

She holds a master’s in Conflict, Peace and Security from the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC) – Ghana, a bachelor’s (Magna Cum Laude) in Politics and International Relations from Lancaster University – UK,  a graduate certificate in Tropical Forest Landscapes: Conservation, Restoration and Sustainable Use from Yale University, three graduate certificates in Tropical Conservation and Development; Digital Geography and GIS; and Intellectual Property from the University of Florida; a graduate certificate in Women’s Leadership in Conservation from Colorado State University, and a graduate certificate in the Political Economy of Land Governance in Africa from the University of the Western Cape – South Africa, just to cite these.

Her research interests are in indigenous data sovereignty; policy design and institutional analysis using rights-based and decolonial frameworks;  digital ethnography and computational social science (incl. AI, social media analysis, text mining);  GeoAI, RuralAI and spatial data analysis for conservation and sustainability applications; science-policy communication, digital literacy strategy, and advocacy for IPLCs; storytelling, visual art, and creative communication for environmental justice and heritage preservation; and CBNRM and rural governance in Africa.

She is currently the Bilingual Review Editor for the New Florida Journal of Anthropology, and the Executive Editor for Indigenous World, the first indigenous-led peer-reviewed journal worldwide.  Beyond academia and advocacy, Metolo is a creative author, an eco-futurist wildlife painter, a songwriter and a contributor to the World Economic Forum agenda for Nature and Biodiversity.