Fatima Denton is an IPCC lead author and the director of an innovations, science, technology and natural resource management division, the special initiatives division, at the Economic Commission for Africa in Addis Ababa.
Fatima Denton is currently the coordinator of the African Climate Policy Centre of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. Prior to this, she led one of the largest adaptation research programmes as part of a joint initiative of Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and Britain's Department for International Development (DFID), managing a portfolio of more than 45 projects across thirty three countries in Africa on a range of adaptation strategies that will help Africa’s poor cope with climate change impacts.
Fatima joined IDRC in 2006 after working as a senior energy scientist with the United Nations Environment Program UNEP Risoe in Denmark where she worked on energy poverty, climate adaptation and policy matters relating to energy SMEs and institutional and governance. Prior to this she worked with the energy programme of Enda Tiers Monde in Senegal on issues such as sustainable development and climate change vulnerability and adaptation, as well as food security, local governance, water, and energy poverty in the Sahel. She has written articles on energy poverty, gender and energy, and climate change adaptation.
She was a coordinating lead author for the Working Group II Fifth Assessment of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and was lead author for the IPCC Special Report on Renewable Energy and Climate Change Mitigation (SREEN). Having held several roles on scientific committees, she is currently a member of the Independent Science Panel (ISP) of the CGIAR Climate Change and Food Security Programme (CCAFs). Fatima holds a PhD in political science and development studies from the University of Birmingham (UK), and completed undergraduate studies at the University of Cheikh Anta Diop, the University of Besancon, the University of Paris – la Sorbonne Paris IV and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Internationales, where she studied respectively humanities, applied linguistics and interpreting, humanities and international relations.
