Hi everyone, My name is Arthur Kouadio. I’m based in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, and I’m a Project Manager and Jurist with 3+ years of experience leading governance, sustainable agriculture, and human rights project across West Africa. How I came to effective altruism I didn’t find EA through a book or a university group. I arrived through a slow, uncomfortable realization on the ground. I was running project that were well-managed, well-funded, and producing measurable outputs and yet something kept nagging at me: are we actually solving anything, or are we just managing problems more efficiently ? That question became impossible to ignore after my time as Executive Director of IASA, where I led a portfolio of sustainable agriculture and community governance projects aligned with SDG 2. The work was meaningful. But watching how well-intentioned interventions consistently failed to address root causes pushed me to look for a more rigorous framework. EA gave me the language and the tools to ask better questions not as an ideology, but as an honest method. What I’m working on and prioritizing I’m currently participating in the CEA Career Bootcamp, working to transition from nationally-scoped development work into a program management role within an EA-aligned organization. My priority cause areas are climate policy, global health and poverty, AI governance, and animal welfare with a particular focus on how these issues are experienced in the Global South, and how EA can better integrate those perspectives into its cause prioritization and program design. I recently shared a longer reflection on this here: [What three years of program delivery in West Africa taught me about EA’s implementation gap](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/tnDQPGFW8vRFiAhrN/what-three-years-of-program-delivery-in-west-africa-taught?commentId=NdTomjvj4oHB85y2r) and the conversation in the comments has already been one of the most intellectually honest exchanges I’ve had on these questions. A fun fact I passed my law degree in Abidjan, then spent years learning how little law matters when the real constraints are political, relational, and logistical. That gap between formal frameworks and operational reality is what I find most interesting and most useful to think about. Looking forward to learning from and contributing to this community. If you’re working on climat policy, governance, global health, AI policy, or operations in EA-aligned organizations or if you’re also navigating this transition from the Global South I’d genuinely enjoy connecting.
Hi everyone,
My name is Arthur Kouadio. I’m based in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, and I’m a Project Manager and Jurist with 3+ years of experience leading governance, sustainable agriculture, and human rights project across West Africa.
How I came to effective altruism
I didn’t find EA through a book or a university group. I arrived through a slow, uncomfortable realization on the ground. I was running project that were well-managed, well-funded, and producing measurable outputs and yet something kept nagging at me: are we actually solving anything, or are we just managing problems more efficiently ?
That question became impossible to ignore after my time as Executive Director of IASA, where I led a portfolio of sustainable agriculture and community governance projects aligned with SDG 2. The work was meaningful. But watching how well-intentioned interventions consistently failed to address root causes pushed me to look for a more rigorous framework. EA gave me the language and the tools to ask better questions not as an ideology, but as an honest method.
What I’m working on and prioritizing
I’m currently participating in the CEA Career Bootcamp, working to transition from nationally-scoped development work into a program management role within an EA-aligned organization. My priority cause areas are climate policy, global health and poverty, AI governance, and animal welfare with a particular focus on how these issues are experienced in the Global South, and how EA can better integrate those perspectives into its cause prioritization and program design.
I recently shared a longer reflection on this here: [What three years of program delivery in West Africa taught me about EA’s implementation gap](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/tnDQPGFW8vRFiAhrN/what-three-years-of-program-delivery-in-west-africa-taught?commentId=NdTomjvj4oHB85y2r) and the conversation in the comments has already been one of the most intellectually honest exchanges I’ve had on these questions.
A fun fact
I passed my law degree in Abidjan, then spent years learning how little law matters when the real constraints are political, relational, and logistical. That gap between formal frameworks and operational reality is what I find most interesting and most useful to think about.
Looking forward to learning from and contributing to this community. If you’re working on climat policy, governance, global health, AI policy, or operations in EA-aligned organizations or if you’re also navigating this transition from the Global South I’d genuinely enjoy connecting.