Research Interests/Experience

Yaw Amo Sarpong has a lot of experience in Commodity Value Chains, Biodiversity and Environmental Sustainability, Environmental and Social Impact Assessment, and Integrated Natural Resource Management (INRM) approaches having been involved in various projects and programs, training and capacity building projects and programs from under the Dutch Government funded NUFFIC-NPT project and its capacity building courses and workshops. He has a lot of skills in environmental project planning, baseline surveys, stakeholder expectations analysis and engagement; project appraisal, analysis and assessment. He is well vest in Data Analysis with specialization in SPSS and SAS, Atlas.ti and Access. He has served as a Quantitative Data Analyst to a number of well-established organizations and consulting firms on a variety of projects including the Population Censors by Ghana Statistical Services (GSS), Quantitative Environmental and Social Auditing for Newmont Ghana Gold Limited (NGGL), Baseline Surveys, Business Plan Development and Formulation, Market Surveys, Rural and Urban Poverty Reduction Strategy Projects, Performance Assessment Projects, Environmental Impact Assessment, Environmental Management and Environmental Policy Analysis Projects and stakeholder expectations and perception surveys. Since 2002 to date, Sarpong has worked on UNDP/GEF, European Union, PLAN International, SIF, World Vision, USAID, CIDA, PPAG, Care International, Newmont, NUFFIC and DANIDA funded projects in Ghana.

He has expertise in planning, developing, organizing and facilitating training programmes on Participatory Environmental and Social Impact Assessments, biodiversity and environmental sustainability, value chain and chain-wide learning, cocoa certification, livelihood empowerment, participatory project appraisal, planning and management, adaptive management, project monitoring and evaluation, community mobilization, animation, sensitization and participation, community ownership and management. He has a wide range of experience in participatory planning approaches, institutional capacity building, and monitoring and evaluation of Environmental projects. He is an accomplished facilitator who has led the design of a number of training manuals and the conduct of extensive short course training programmes particularly in environmental management, value chain, adaptive management, research methods, project appraisal and sustainable livelihoods.

Sarpong has gained enough working experience in the areas of Water and Sanitation by working for Training, Research and Networking for Development (TREND), a Kumasi based NGO specializing in Water and Sanitation, in areas of health with the West African Project to Combat HIV/AIDS (WAPTCAS) and currently with the Bureau of Integrated Rural Development (BIRD) of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and technology (KNUST) for over 13years now on a number of development, environmental, capacity building and rural development oriented projects. He is also very skilled in impacting knowledge to students and professionals on how to work together in an interdisciplinary manner to solve complex environmental problems.

As a researcher with BIRD, a research unit of KNUST, which specializes in rural development in Ghana, he has been capacitated on how to solve complex environmental and rural development problems using IFC's Environmental and Social Performance Standards.