Idrissa Mamoud Tarawallie is the Head of Programme Sierra Leone.

Idrissa Mamoud Tarawallie is an international development management specialist, a programme manager, a researcher and an educator with more than 15 years’ progressive experience in governance systems strengthening, elections and capacity development interventions for national agencies and civil society organizations in the West African sub-region. His career path has combined international development and programme management with higher education teaching and research, public sector governance reform and behaviour change communication in developing and fragile contexts.  

In his academic career, Idrissa has taught a postgraduate course in Violent Conflict and Development at the London School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) as a graduate teaching assistant. In Sierra Leone, he has taught under and postgraduate courses at the department of Political Science, Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone, including Comparative Politics and Politics of Development.  In in international development management career, Idrissa was Country Director for BBC Media Action in Sierra Leone from 2019 to 2022 and was Team Leader for the DFID (now FCDO) funded civil society election participation support programme – ‘The Standing Together for Free Fair and Peace Elections in Sierra Leone (2017-2018). He has worked in elections and peace promotion process in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria and speaks English and other local West African dialects fluently. Through a consultancy with DIA (with and EU funded project), he led the development of the Strategic Plans  of  the Electoral Commission for Sierra Leone (ECSL) in 2019/2020 and the National Elections Watch (NEW) in 2021 – the biggest civil society elections observation group in Sierra Leone.   Idrissa holds a Bachelor of Arts (BA, honours) in Political Science from the University of Sierra Leone, Master of Art (MA) in Politics and Governance from the Institute of Development Policy and Management (IDPM), University of Manchester, and a PhD and Development Studies from SOAS – University of London.