Team

LEDNA is managed by a lean team. The management team develops the LEDNA strategy, substance, technical and web-based elements and takes care of funding and donor integration. The management team will work to support and develop a growing team of regional facilitators and volunteers dedicated to building communities of practice on the ground and sharing knowledge in Africa.

Currently the LEDNA team comprises five part time members: François Yatta is our Project Coordinator, Serge Zelezeck is our Network Facilitator, Sonja Ende as the Local Economic Development Adviser and Marianne Sulzer in charge of Support Services.

François Yatta, the coordinator has worked in Municipal Finance and LED in francophone Africa for 18 years. He worked successively, on urban and regional issues at national government level, as a researcher in Paris at the “Observatory of Economy and Local Institutions” and as a regional adviser at the Municipal Development Programme of West and Central Africa. There he developed a specific LED methodology called ECOLOC which was developed in more than 20 West African cities. He has also worked as a consultant for the European Commission, UNCDF, and the OECD’s Sahel and West Africa Club. In addition to LEDNA responsibilities Francois is developing two national LED programmes in Niger and Mali and is spearheading LEDNA’s activities in Francophone Africa.

Zelezeck Nguimatsa Serge is a trans-disciplinary social scientist with a background in law, sociology, African history and economics. He holds a Masters degree in Human Rights and Democratisation from the University of Pretoria and is currently finalising his Doctorate thesis in endogenous entrepreneurship at the University of South Africa. He completed his undergraduate studies in Cameroon and thereafter worked for three years as a Researcher in two leading law firms in Cameroon dealing among others with the International Developmental NGOs portfolio of the firms.  Since July 2009, Zelezeck has been the LEDNA Network Facilitator. In this capacity, he has developed a strong theoretical and practical expertise in areas of knowledge management, learning network, community of practice, social networking, ICT4D and other e-learning strategies. He is a committed pan-Africanist and has lived, worked or carried research in 8 African countries. Zelezeck is fluent in Yemba, English, French and Portuguese.  His core area of interest is self-reliant economic production in Africa and he strives for LEDNA to foster a more self-sustainable LED culture among African local governments. 

From June 2009 onwards Sonja Ende has started to support LEDNA with international LED expertise. Sonja has worked as an LED consultant since many years in various African countries on short and long-term assignments and has an academic background in business administration and development studies. Her specific expert knowledge includes the creation of an enabling business environment which is conducive to economic growth, participatory methods and facilitation of processes for LED, the reduction of Red Tape, effective public-private dialogue processes and the impact of gender on LED.

Marianne Sulzer, LEDNA Support Service Provider, is a knowledge management specialist. After working in banking and insurance, she now works in development cooperation, focusing on quality assurance in project implementation in a variety of projects including local economic development and microfinance. Marianne works for Swisscontact, the Swiss Foundation for Technical Cooperation, that has been mandated by the LEDNA project to provide support services such as accounting, contracting and reporting to the project. She is based in South Africa.