Driving Evidence-Based
Development Across Africa

Bio

Mohamed Samba Barrie is a development economist and public finance strategist with over a decade of high-impact experience spanning central banking, government economic policy, international development research, and private sector advisory. As the Executive Director of Development Decision Support (DDS), he leads the firm's strategic direction, oversees the delivery of its technical programmes, and drives its positioning as Sierra Leone's foremost evidence-based consultancy; with a portfolio that spans fiscal policy, property tax reform, public finance analytics, institutional capacity building, and data-driven development strategy.

 

Mohamed has also served as Technical Manager for Sierra Leone's property tax reform under the Local Government Revenue Initiative (LoGRI), a flagship programme of the International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD) at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs. In this role, he supported the end-to-end technical delivery of property surveys across Makeni, Freetown, and Kenema; directing a field operation of over 120 enumerators, generating more than 50,000 property records ahead of schedule, and deploying integrated GIS and banking payment systems that enabled city councils to monitor coverage, identify unregistered properties, and design evidence-based rate and billing policies. His advisory work directly informed municipal rate-setting, exemption frameworks, and the rollout of digital billing systems across multiple city councils.

 

Mohamed's institutional career includes senior economist and research roles at the Bank of Sierra Leone and the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development, where he produced macroeconomic forecasting models, fiscal risk assessments, and monetary policy simulations that informed executive-level decision-making. At the Bank, he built original DSGE and VAR models to simulate the macroeconomic effects of VAT reforms, technological shocks, and exchange rate dynamics; several of which were presented at the Economic Association of Sierra Leone Conference and published in peer-reviewed journals. At the Ministry, he led policy evaluations on post-Ebola economic recovery, agricultural subsidy reform, and education planning, contributing directly to Sierra Leone's National Development Plan and its alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals.

 

His private sector experience includes a tenure as Research Analyst in the Deal Advisory division at KPMG Sierra Leone, where he supported investment diagnostics, public-private partnership structuring, and strategic market entry analysis, including a sector-level study that influenced a multi-million-dollar agribusiness investment. Across these roles, Mohamed has consistently operated at the interface of rigorous quantitative analysis and high-stakes institutional decision-making.

 

An active contributor to economic scholarship, Mohamed has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals and working paper series on macroeconomic modelling, monetary policy transmission, property tax reform, exchange rate forecasting, DSGE simulation, and machine learning applications in economic analysis. He is a sought-after trainer and practitioner, having facilitated advanced econometrics and data analytics workshops for university faculty, central government economists, and local government officials across Sierra Leone. His certifications span advanced data analytics and machine learning (Google), ICTD tax and development research, and WAIFEM econometric and monetary policy training.

 

Under his leadership, DDS has established institutional relationships with the GOSL, IOM, IGC, the Ministry of Finance, the National Revenue Authority, and multiple local councils. His vision for DDS is a consultancy that closes the gap between analytical rigour and real-world implementation, building data systems and institutional knowledge that outlast project cycles.

 

Mohamed holds a double Master's degree in Comparative Law, Economics and Finance and an MSC Economics and Finance Research from the University of Turin and the International University College of Turin (Italy), and a BSc in Honours in Economics from Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone. His professional development includes specialist training at WAIFEM in advanced macroeconomic modelling, econometric methods for policy analysis, and monetary policy frameworks.

Bio

Alieu Gilbert Fullah is a GIS and data systems specialist with over a decade of professional experience spanning geospatial analytics, ICT infrastructure, software development, and large-scale cadastral systems. As Technical Director at Development Decision Support (DDS), he leads the firm's technical strategy, directing data architecture, digital platform development, and advanced geospatial analytics across DDS's research, governance, and public finance reform portfolio, and ensuring that every assignment is underpinned by technically rigorous, scalable, and policy-relevant digital infrastructure.

 

Gilbert's deepest expertise lies in Sierra Leone's municipal property tax reform. As Technical Specialist — GIS, Data & Systems at the Local Government Revenue Initiative (LoGRI) (ICTD / University of Toronto), he serves as the senior technical authority for all GIS operations and cadastral system integration across Freetown, Makeni, and Kenema City Councils. He performs aerial imagery orthorectification and validation, manages ArcGIS Online multi-city databases and offline mapping packages for the Moptax 2.0 property tax platform, designs property discovery tools using Field Maps and Survey123, develops photo verification and data quality assurance workflows, and automates data pipelines to reduce manual processing across the reform cycle. Previously, as Data Technician & GIS Supervisor on the same programme, he led a team of over 80 field enumerators and GIS technicians in one of Sierra Leone's largest-ever cadastral data collection exercises, capturing over 50,000 individual property records with rigorous quality controls and spatial accuracy standards.

 

As Head of Technology at the Institute for Governance Reform (IGR), Gilbert led a 10-member IT team through a full digital transformation — integrating advanced analytics, establishing IT governance frameworks that reduced system vulnerabilities by 30%, and championing AI and data analytics R&D across one of Sierra Leone's leading governance institutions. Earlier in his career at IGR as Data Analyst, he deployed 15+ survey instruments collecting data from 500+ respondents nationwide, automated analytical workflows in Python cutting processing time by 25%, standardized validation protocols improving dataset completeness by 40%, and collaborated directly with the World Bank, Irish Aid, New York University, and Afrobarometer on governance and development data projects.

 

Gilbert's career includes international roles with Microsoft Shanghai, as a Certified Technical Support Engineer for Microsoft Teams — and UNDP Copenhagen, where he resolved connectivity issues across UNDP's global infrastructure and analyzed real-time IoT data from smart healthcare deployments. This global exposure, combined with over four years managing the full network infrastructure for Bollore Transport and Logistics, gives him an unusually broad technical foundation — from enterprise network administration and cloud platforms to field-level mobile data tools and community-facing digital applications.

 

He is the creator of several independently-built public platforms, including the BioMeter Online Tracker (biometersl.com) — a live political accountability platform tracking Presidential campaign promises, the Sierra Leone Governance and Services Tracker (slgst.org) built for the USAID BASE programme, and an EU-funded education monitoring system tracking performance across 200 schools in five districts. He has also developed and published a GIS mobile application on the Google Play Store, and conducted cross-lingual sentiment analysis on Belt and Road Initiative media coverage across Kenya and China, demonstrating both the breadth of his software capability and the depth of his analytical thinking.

 

Gilbert holds an MSc in Information and Communication Engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology (China) and a BSc in Information Systems from the University of Sierra Leone. His certifications include GIS for Data Analysis and Visualization (Specialist), the Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate, Advanced Data Analytics with Python, Machine Learning and Deep Learning Specializations, and IoT Fundamentals: Big Data & Analytics. His technical stack spans ArcGIS Online, QGIS, Python, R, Power BI, Tableau, Django, Flutter, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Firebase, and the full suite of mobile data collection and cadastral tools. At DDS, he is the technical architect behind the firm's growing capability to deliver data-driven solutions that are not just analytically sound, but institutionally embedded and built to last.

Bio

Amadu Jan Jalloh is a development professional and ICT systems specialist with over five years of hands-on experience at the forefront of Sierra Leone's municipal property tax reform. As Programs Director and Chief Operating Officer of Development Decision Support (DDS), he provides the institutional backbone through which DDS translates strategy into delivery, with executive-level responsibility for Finance, HR, Procurement, and Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning (MEL) across the firm's full programme portfolio.

 

Amadu's career is defined by his deep, end-to-end involvement in Sierra Leone's Local Government Revenue Initiative (LoGRI), the flagship property tax modernization programme of the International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD) at the University of Toronto. Over five years, he has progressed from Project Assistant to Project Coordinator to Project Manager, accumulating a rare depth of institutional knowledge across the full reform cycle. In that time, he has driven the deployment of Moptax 1.0 and Moptax 2.0 — the core property tax management platforms, across Freetown, Kenema, and Makeni City Councils; designed and institutionalized Standard Operating Procedures and internal audit frameworks now in active use across multiple councils; and led data accuracy verification, billing reconciliation, and formal system handover processes that have permanently strengthened local revenue infrastructure.

 

As a field operator and systems designer, Amadu has managed large-scale data collection campaigns and trained council staff in property valuation, equipment usage, and digital workflow management. He brings direct proficiency in QGIS, R, SPSS, KoboToolbox, Survey123, and the Moptax platform, and has designed bespoke Excel-based payment tracking and Rate Demand Notice delivery systems for the Freetown City Council; practical ICT solutions built in direct response to operational gaps identified in the field. His work as a Data Technician and Catchment Monitoring Officer for the Environmental Foundation for Africa further sharpened his geospatial capabilities, applying satellite imagery, drone mapping data, and mobile tracking tools to environmental monitoring.

 

At DDS, Amadu leads project planning, execution, and monitoring across all active programmes,  coordinating cross-functional teams, managing risk registers and budgets, overseeing MEL systems aligned to international standards, and representing the organization in technical engagements with clients, donors, and government counterparts. He is also driving DDS's 2025/2026 Sustainability Action Plan under LoGRI, ensuring long-term municipal ownership of the reform systems his team has built, a commitment to institutional durability that defines his approach to every assignment.

 

Amadu holds a BSc in Business and Information Technology (First Class Honours) from Njala University, and is currently enrolled in an MSc in Sustainable Development at the University of Makeni. His professional certifications include the Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate, IBM AI Fundamentals, IBM Project Management Fundamentals, and a Diploma in QuickBooks Desktop. A community leader and youth mentor beyond his professional work, Amadu brings to DDS a combination of technical precision, operational discipline, and a genuine commitment to building public institutions that work.