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Vera D. Kwakofi is a Senior News Editor, Commissioning with the BBC World Service and is responsible for the BBC’s International TV Operations in Africa. She leads teams of journalists based across Africa and in the UK who produce the multi-award-winning Africa Eye Investigations, Business, Health, Sport, Women, News Analysis and Factual and Youth content for Africa in English, French, and Swahili. Vera has more than 20 years of experience in international journalism and commissioning content across multiple platforms with a particular focus on telling African Stories to global audiences. She created the BBC Women of Africa Series, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She actively participates in various discussion panels promoting and providing a better understanding of the Africa region.

Vera holds an MSc in Consultant Management and Organisational Change from the University of London, Birkbeck College, and a BA Hons in Politics from the London Guildhall University. She also has a Diploma in Journalism and Mass Communications from the Ghana Institute of Journalism. Vera is a Trustee for the Serious Trust, a UK Arts charity that supports development and access to music and support for its creators.

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Babatunde Omilola manages the African Development Bank’s multi-billion-dollar response to the COVID-19 pandemic to save lives and livelihoods throughout Africa and to help African countries strengthen their health systems, stabilize their economies, and alleviate the economic and social impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. A global development leader, Babatunde served as Head of Development Planning with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in New York and led the United Nations Inter-Agency Task Force on the monitoring and implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) globally. He also co-chaired the United Nations Secretary-General’s High-Level Task Force on Global Food and Nutrition Security Technical Team. Babatunde was UNDP’s Regional Practice Leader for poverty reduction and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Africa and UNDP’s Chief Economist and Head of Policy and Strategy in South Africa. He was also the Africa-wide Coordinator with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). He handled the relationship of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) with the African Union Commission and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. He has visited and delivered development assistance in over 80 countries worldwide in Africa, Europe, Middle East, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Babatunde was selected as a Fellow of Comparative Research Program for preventing and eradicating poverty by the International Social Science Council in 2014. He won the prestigious Ford Foundation International Fellowship in 2001 and the Graduate Research Fellowship of the International Development Research Centre in 2004 for his MPhil and PhD degrees in International Development and Development Economics from the University of Sussex. He is a writer and regular speaker on global development for international news agencies.

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Andrei Kureichik is a Belarusian playwright, director, publicist, and civil activist. As a writer and director prior to 2020, Andrei was especially beloved for his comedies and suspense thrillers. Following the contested presidential elections and brutal aftermath in Belarus in August 2020, Andrei gained an international following as a political playwright. Forced to flee the country as a member of the Coordination Council working with perceived winner Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya’s transition team, Andrei leveraged his creative energy to produce the documentary play “Insulted. Belarus(sia)” about the 2020 presidential elections, subsequent protests, and violent crackdown by Alexander Lukashenko’s regime in Belarus. The play has been translated into 29 languages and received 200 readings and performances across the globe. Articles about the play have been published in Plays International and Europe, Contemporary Theatre Review, the Boston Globe, Dialog, and Theatre Journal.

As a member of the Coordination Council of Belarus, he was awarded the 2020 Sakharov Prize by the European Parliament. In 2020 Andrei founded the YouTube civil rights channel “Alternative Blogovision” which in one year became one of the leaders of the Belarusian segment of YouTube with more than two million of views per month.