Lily Odarno

About

Lily Odarno is the Senior Director for Africa at CATF, where she leads the organization’s pan-African strategy to deliver pragmatic, development-centric climate and energy solutions. With over 15 years of experience working at the intersection of climate and energy sector transformation in Africa, she has established a robust network of policy makers, industry leaders, power utilities, and civil society partners across the continent.

Since joining CATF in 2021, Lily has served as the founding director of the Africa program, overseeing a multi-disciplinary team of economists, engineers, and policy experts. She is the architect of the Africa Utilities Roundtable, a key engagement platform for power utilities within the West Africa Power Pool and beyond.

Prior to her role at CATF, Lily was a Senior Associate and Policy Lead at the World Resources Institute (WRI), where she spearheaded the establishment of WRI’s energy access program in East Africa. She also led the deployment of the Energy Access Explorer, a geospatial tool that has become a standard for integrated energy planning in Africa. Her earlier career includes tenure as a research associate at the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy and as a researcher at the UNEP Copenhagen Climate Center.

Lily is a recognized expert in the field, currently serving on the Editorial Board of the Climate Policy journal. She contributed to the scoping of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Seventh Assessment Report (AR7). Her thought leadership has been featured in global media outlets, including the Financial Times, Voice of America, BBC World, and African Arguments.

Lily holds a Ph.D. in Energy and Environmental Policy from the University of Delaware (United States), an M.Sc.(Eng) in Environmental Management from Aalborg University (Denmark), and a B.Sc. in Biological Sciences from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (Ghana).