Aboubacar Hema is a Research Analyst in the Development Strategies and Governance Unit. He is a data scientist, statistician, and software developer. Prior to joining IFPRI, Aboubacar worked as a data analyst with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), where he successfully implemented and analyzed the MHPSS surveys (round 1-3) as well as the endline surveys for Senegal, Guinea, Nigeria, and Gambia. He also worked as a statistician with the Senegalese Institute for Agricultural Research (ISRA-BAME), as well as with the Consortium for Economic and Social Research (CRES), where he was involved in the design, implementation, and analysis of various household surveys, and as an R developer (sdmApp package) with the French Agricultural Research Center for International Development (CIRAD).

Aboubacar earned a MicroMaster in Statistics and Data Science at MIT, where he learned the foundations of data science, statistics, and machine learning, using big data and probabilistic modelling to extract meaningful information for decision-making. He graduated from the National School of Statistics and Economic Analysis in Dakar and has a license 3 in Computer Science from the University of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.