Abera Tola

Abera Tola Gada is a Senior Fellow and the Regional Director of Synergos, working to help increase the food security and incomes of smallholder farmers and their families.

Before joining Synergos in 2011, Abera was the Regional Director of Oxfam America for the Horn of Africa program and prior to this he was the founder and Executive Director of HUNDEE, a well-known local development organization in Ethiopia. Abera has worked for the Canadian International Development Agency as a consultant to evaluate its Good Governance and Democracy Fund distribution to the government, INGOs and NGOs in Ethiopia. He was a senior program officer for the Inter-Africa Group, a regional NGO dedicated to peace and development in the African continent. He also worked as a coordinator for the advocacy network of six local NGOs – this network was formed for promoting democracy, civic education and election monitoring in Ethiopia. Additionally, Abera created a consortium of civil society organizations to coordinate the first Ethiopian election in 1995 and dispatched more than 2,000 election monitors to all parts of the country.

Abera has a BA in business administration from Addis Ababa University, a Certificate in Management of non-profit organizations from Open University in the United Kingdom, and an MPA from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.