Tabitha Olang

Tabitha Olang joined The Rockefeller Foundation in September 2019. As an Associate, she is responsible for supporting the Foundation’s Power Initiative in Africa portfolio through project management, policy research, grant management and development of key stakeholder convenings.

Before joining the Foundation, Tabitha was an Associate at IDinsight, a global advisory and research organization that helps development leaders maximize their social impact. In this role, she gained substantial project management experience in various sectors where she used data and evidence to inform the decisions and actions of development leaders. Previously, Tabitha has worked as a research fellow at IBM Research Africa and was part of a Strathmore University Research group. During graduate school, she spent three years carrying out primary research to illustrate the linkage between fuel choice and energy poverty in low-income households in an urban Sub Sahara African context. This research aimed to contextualize populations without access to modern energy in order to formulate effective policy considerations on modern energy adoption and continuity of usage by target groups. The main finding was a general preference and desire to use modern energy sources across most households, irrespective of the severity of energy poverty. The study recommended that emphasis be placed on contextualizing levels of energy poverty in households, users’ perspectives -and how these characteristics and perspectives would affect continuity of usage of the modern energy source adopted. She has also collaborated in other published energy-related research.

Tabitha holds a Masters in Sustainability Science from The University of Tokyo and received her bachelors’ degree in Actuarial Science from Strathmore University.