Eliud Luutsa

Eliud is a global development professional and an SME thought leader with extensive experience working with development organizations and innovation hubs to fundraise, design and implement programmes and services that provide underserved communities with Knowledge, Access and Choice! He is driven by a strong passion for innovation and a firm belief in the power of entrepreneurship and technology as enablers of development. With a background in Financial Engineering, Eliud believes economic empowerment begins with Financial Inclusion. He therefore endeavors to thoughtfully co-design and responsibly deliver products that include these communities into global commerce and finance systems while ensuring they have the appropriate capacity and technology to access them.

Previously, Eliud has served as an advisor to the International Trade Centre's Ye! Community in Kenya where he built a community to support young social entrepreneurs. He also served as a Youth Representative for the UN Working Group on Youth, a dedicated platform supporting the implementation of the Pact for the Future. He worked as a design researcher consultant at ThinkPlace where he collaborated with leaders to co-design change with system users and stakeholders using the Human Centered Design and Systems Thinking approaches and the Qualitative & Quantitative Research methodologies. In this capacity, Eliud fundraised for, designed and implemented several impactful donor projects including an internet connectivity project in partnership with the Tony Blaire Institute for Global Change(TBI) and Starlink that generated insights, policy recommendations and use cases for high-speed internet connectivity in hard-to-reach communities in Rwanda, Malawi and Zambia. He also worked on a Climate Games Project in partnership with Africa YMCA that sought to address climate change through Design Thinking and gamification techniques with the goal of bolstering young people's resilience to the adverse effects of climate change, particularly in mitigating risk factors that lead to youth conflicts with the law. 

Additionally, Eliud worked on a digital skills for jobs project in partnership with the International Trade Center(ITC) where he trained youth refugees drawn from Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps on design thinking and digital skills for online jobs with the goal of increasing young people's employability and creating quality jobs through innovative digital channels. Eliud also led the Innobid Procurement project that leverages AI to boost efficiency and transparency in procurement, addressing procurement disparities that affect women and youth entrepreneurs through process simplification, providing relevant information and fostering fairness and transparency with the aim of creating pathways for more equitable distribution of government, global development and private sector contracts.

These work experiences have helped Eliud sharpen his technical expertise in strategic partnerships building, project management, research, design, fundraising , thought leadership and advocacy and develop key people skills in leadership, collaboration, storytelling, and networking. He has also gained invaluable experience working with governments, business community, academia, civil society, funders, local communities and other stakeholders.

Eliud holds a BSc Degree in Financial Engineering and is currently pursuing an Executive Diploma in Strategy and Innovation. He is a winner of the Accountability Lab's inaugural HackCorruption Hackathon held in South Africa in 2022. Hackcorruption is a tech4good event that aims to bring people together to co-create anti- corruption solutions that can be used by governments or civil society with the goal of stimulating the innovative application of technology to address accountability gaps and build systemic integrity. Eliud has been recognised by the UN Office of the Secretary-General's Envoy on Youth as a Youth Leader for his work of promoting social innovation for the Youth in Africa. He has also been recognised by the National Democratic Institute as a democracy game changer, and the International Trade Center for leveraging technology for good.