Kent Elbow serves on the Guinnovation board of directors from Madison, Wisconsin. He is a specialist in land tenure and property rights focusing on francophone West and Central Africa. Since 2005, Kent has worked as a consultant in design and implementation of development projects financed by the Millennium Challenge Corporation, including projects in Benin, Burkina Faso, Morocco, Niger, Senegal and Togo.

Also since 2005 Kent has served for varying time periods as: Senior Technical Advisor to USAID’s Property Rights and Artisanal Diamond Development (PRADD) project in the Central African Republic and Guinea; Task Manager of USAID’s support for establishment of a national land observatory in Burkina Faso; and Lead Researcher of a consultant team conducting a World Bank-financed review of the land tenure sector in Burundi.

Earlier, Kent served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Cameroon (1979-1982); was a graduate student and researcher on the staff of the Land Tenure Center of the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1987-1996); and was a resident advisor/manager of USAID-funded development initiatives located in Senegal and Guinea (1996-2005).

Kent holds a Ph.D. in Development from the University of Wisconsin-Madison; an M.A. in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Iowa; and a B.A. in Rhetoric from the University of Illinois. He speaks, reads and writes French and is familiar with a number of African languages.