Our Team

Dr. Caroline Jehu-Appiah is the Founder and CEO of Nikao Support Initiative, a seasoned health economist with over three decades of experience shaping health policy, financing, and system reforms across Africa and globally.

At the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, she served as Deputy Director for Health, Nutrition, and Polio Eradication in Nigeria, leading a multi-million-dollar portfolio and driving measurable improvements in immunization coverage, PHC systems, maternal and child health, and public health resource efficiency.

As Lead Policy Advisor to the President of the African Development Bank, she advanced Universal Health Coverage across the continent. Earlier, as Deputy Director for Policy at the Ghana Health Service, she co-authored Ghana’s first National Health Policy, the inaugural Health Service Strategic Plan, and contributed to the landmark CHPS initiative and National Health Insurance Scheme.

At NSI, Caroline leads the organization’s strategic and technical agenda — focusing on health financing, economic evaluation, and the scale-up of high-impact innovations including AI-enabled point-of-care ultrasound for maternal and newborn care.

She holds an MD, an MSc in Health Economics, and a PhD in Health Economics and Healthcare Financing, and is a published author with multiple peer-reviewed contributions in health policy and systems strengthening.

Dr. Marjorie Opuni is a senior health economist with more than 20 years of experience conducting applied economic research across sub-Saharan Africa. Her work has directly shaped global and national strategies to improve the efficiency and equity of health service delivery, particularly in HIV, maternal and child health, and primary care.

She has led multi-country economic evaluations in over a dozen African countries, generating cost and efficiency data used by governments, donors, and multilateral agencies to inform policy and investment decisions. At UNAIDS, she co-authored the landmark HIV investment framework, which guided HIV resource allocation strategies in more than 50 countries.

More recently, she has collaborated on primary healthcare costing studies in Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, and India, and co-authored publications on the cost and facility-level management of HIV services across Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, South Africa, and Zambia. She is currently collaborating on discrete choice experiments examining patient preferences for tuberculosis testing in South Africa.

Abdu Adamu is a seasoned implementation scientist and public health expert with over a decade of proven success leading high-impact health systems strengthening and donor-funded programs across Nigeria and other African countries. He brings deep expertise in translating evidence into scalable solutions, with a strong track record of delivering complex interventions in partnership with government, development partners, and multilateral agencies.

His leadership spans strategic planning, program coordination, stakeholder engagement, adaptive management, health financing, quality improvement, and institutional capacity strengthening. He has played pivotal roles in nationally significant initiatives — including expanding innovative tuberculosis treatment models, implementing the Basic Health Care Provision Fund, and strengthening state health systems through major USAID-supported programs.

His international consulting experience with the World Health Organization has further broadened his capacity to design context-responsive solutions. A respected thought leader in implementation research, Abdu has co-authored several peer-reviewed publications. He holds a PhD from Stellenbosch University, an MSc in Implementation Science from the University of the Witwatersrand, and an MBBS from Bayero University Kano.

Dr. Rita Nana-Cheraa is NSI’s Data Manager and Econometrician, supporting the organisation’s evidence-driven mission to strengthen health systems and optimise health financing.

With over 19 years of combined experience spanning finance, high school and university-level teaching, and quantitative research, Rita brings a powerful blend of analytical rigour and practical insight to NSI’s work. Her expertise in econometric modelling and data management directly underpins NSI’s capacity to generate the robust, context-sensitive evidence that governments, development agencies, and donors rely on to make smarter health investment decisions.

Rita holds a BSc in Mathematics, an MSc in Economics and Econometrics, and a PhD in Business and Management — a multidisciplinary foundation that equips her to translate complex datasets into clear, actionable intelligence. Her contributions span cost-effectiveness analysis, resource forecasting, and mixed-methods research, supporting NSI’s integrated pillars of health systems strengthening and sustainable health financing.

Finda Koroma is a seasoned diplomat, development strategist, and regional policymaker with over 25 years of leadership experience across Africa’s public, private, and multilateral sectors. From 2018 to 2022, she served as Vice President of the ECOWAS Commission, steering regional integration across health, trade, energy, and infrastructure, and leading key institutional reforms to strengthen governance and operational effectiveness.

Prior to ECOWAS, she held senior roles within the Government of Sierra Leone and advised multiple African governments and development partners on energy policy, legal reform, and regional cooperation frameworks. She is widely recognized for her expertise in public policy, strategic governance, and institutional capacity building, and for her commitment to gender equity and inclusive development.

At NSI, Finda provides high-level strategic guidance on governance, regional partnerships, and policy influence — shaping NSI’s institutional strategy, strengthening its positioning across West Africa, and ensuring its work remains rooted in equity, evidence, and systems transformation.

Lesley Dodoo is a seasoned legal and governance expert with over two decades of experience advising governments on public procurement, financial regulation, and institutional reform. She has held senior legal roles across Ghana’s public sector — including as Legal Director and Board Secretary at the Public Procurement Authority and Principal Legal Counsel in the Office of Legal Affairs at the Ministry of Finance.

Her expertise spans procurement contracting, loan documentation procedures, contract negotiation and management, and the resolution of complex contractual disputes. She also served as a short-term consultant at the African Development Bank in Tunis, providing legal support to the Board Secretariat, and is a qualified Notary Public of the Republic of Ghana.

At NSI, Lesley serves as Senior Legal and Governance Advisor, providing strategic counsel on regulatory frameworks, public financial management, and contracting models for health systems strengthening — helping ensure the legal soundness of NSI’s engagements with government and development partners.

Professor Obinna Onwujekwe is a leading African health economist and renowned authority in health systems research and pharmacoeconomics. He holds dual professorial appointments at the University of Nigeria Enugu Campus and is Adjunct Professor of Health Policy and Systems at the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research (NIMR). He serves as Director of the Nigerian National Centre on Health Policy and Systems, Coordinator of the Health Policy Research Group, and President of the Nigerian Health Economics Association (NiHEA).

His expertise spans health financing policy, economic evaluation, health technology assessment, and the political economy of health reform. He has advised ministries of health, multilateral agencies, and national health insurance schemes across Africa, and has served on numerous high-level platforms including the WHO African Advisory Committee on Health Research and Development and the African Union’s COVID-19 Socio-Economy Working Group.

A prolific researcher and editor of the African Journal of Health Economics, he has authored over 490 peer-reviewed publications. At NSI, he serves as Senior Scientific Advisor, guiding the organization’s research strategy, technical rigour, and systems thinking.

Dr. Chris Atim is an esteemed health financing specialist with over three decades of experience shaping national and regional health systems across Africa. A founding member of Ghana’s National Health Insurance Authority and former Executive Director of the African Health Economics and Policy Association (AfHEA), he has played a pivotal role in designing and implementing pro-poor health financing reforms, social health insurance schemes, and strategic purchasing mechanisms that have improved access and equity in healthcare.

He has held senior advisory roles with the World Bank, USAID, the WHO, P4H, and R4D, leading efforts to strengthen health financing governance and build institutional capacity for Universal Health Coverage. He is widely published on issues ranging from health insurance to fiscal decentralization and equity in health service delivery.

As Senior Advisor to NSI, Dr. Atim brings deep expertise in health financing strategy, policy dialogue, and systems-level reform — supporting NSI’s work on fiscal space analysis, provider payment design, and sustainable financing models to improve the resilience and equity of Nigeria’s primary healthcare system.