Nancy Hafkin

Nancy Jane Hafkin is a pioneer of networking and development information and electronic communications in Africa, spurring the Pan African Development Information System (PADIS) of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) from 1987 until 1997. She also played a role in facilitating the Association for Progressive Communications's work to enable email connectivity in more than 10 countries during the early 1990s, before full Internet connectivity became a reality in most of Africa.

Work Hafkin studied history and anthropology at Brandeis University in Boston from 1960 to 1965. She then studied at Boston University from 1965 to 1967. There, she found a mentor in Professor Ruth Morgenthau, who encouraged her to intensively study African history during her graduate studies from 1967 to 1973. At the time it was a young field in which many women were active. Hafkin received her doctorate with a thesis on Trade, Society and Politics in Northern Mozambique from 1753-1913.

Move to Ethiopia Hafkin moved to Ethiopia in 1975 with her husband, Berhanu Abebe, an Ethiopian classmate at Brandeis, and they lived in Addis Ababa for nearly 25 years, until 2000.

When Hafkin worked for the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), the Internet did not yet exist. While her efforts with UNECA were focused on economic development in every African country, she noticed that information was basically inaccessible on the continent with data being shared by fax and postal delivery.