Speaker

Akissa Bahri is actually a member of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) Board of Governors, of the International Water and Sanitation Centre (IRC) Supervisory Board and of the United Nations University-Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH) International Advisory Committee. She served as Advisor to the Chief of Government, as Minister of Agriculture, Water Resources and Fisheries as well as Secretary of State for Water Resources in the Government of Tunisia. Her fields of research include water resources development and management, agricultural use of marginal waters and biosolids, and their impacts on the environment with a focus on water quality and water use efficiency. She has worked in various capacities such as Professor at the National Agricultural Institute of Tunisia (INAT), Coordinator of the African Water Facility at the African Development Bank, Director for Africa at IWMI, and as Director of Research at the National Research Institute for Agricultural Engineering, Water, and Forestry (INRGREF) in Tunisia. She holds a Ph.D. from Lund University, Sweden. She has authored several papers and has been awarded a number of prizes among others the Grand Prize of Scientific Merit for Development from Guinness Foundation, the Kuwait Prize in the Field of Waste Recycling from KFAS, the "Prof. C.N.R. Rao Prize for Scientific Research" awarded by TWAS and the IWA Women in Water Award awarded by the IWA.