Welcome to my universe! I am glad you are here!

I am Dr. Kouakou Donatien Adou, a native of  Côte d’Ivoire or the Ivory Coast, a West African country. I am a graduate of the Harry S Truman School of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Missouri and currently a Research Manager at MQO Research in the Halifax (Nova Scotia, Canada) office. I was an African fellow at the World Bank Group in Washington DC before joining MQO Research. My specialties are in Comparative Politics, and Public Policy and Administration with a focus on Africa. My research and teaching interests in Comparative Politics revolve around the politics of development broadly defined. My research looks specifically at the origins of corruption/accountability and why some countries, sub-national entities, and individuals are more corrupt than others. In public policy, I look at attitudes toward the poor and indigenous development policies for developing countries. I am also versed in survey research, experiments, mixed methods, and econometrics. I collaborated with several scholars on multiple research projects that are either published, under review, or working papers. Please visit the "Research" tab for more information about my research activities.

My dissertation supervised by Dr. Jonathan Krieckhaus and a panel of amazing scholars used a combination of behavioral economics, interviews, surveys, and observational data to investigate how the process of modernization shaped corrupt behaviors in Africa as we know it today. 

I believe that the average person should be able to have access to the amazing work produced by academics. To help achieve that objective I am committed not only to making my own work policy-relevant but also to making academic research accessible to a broader public through a series of blog articles that answer questions of public interest using academic findings. You can learn more about my engagement with Audace Institut Afrique at https://www.audace-afrique.org/l-equipe/114-conseil-dorientation-stategique/907-kouakou-donatien-adou-2.

Please take a seat and look at the other tabs of my website where you will find more details about my research, teaching, activities in the field, and my commitment to development.