Melissa Baker, based in Nairobi, has been working in market research, social research and evaluation in Africa for more than 30 years. Prior to joining Rogers MacJohn as our lead market research specialist, Melissa served as CEO of Kantar’s Africa division for social and public research.  Kantar is the world’s largest market and social research company. 

Melissa led all major social research and evaluation studies across the region, ranging from impact assessments and programme evaluations, through large scale surveys, qualitative projects, innovation/HCD and other formative work. As part of this, she has worked extensively in research and information relating to market systems covering agricultural inputs and other business services, gender disparity, adoption of farm technologies and methods, value chain analysis, needs assessment through qualitative, quantitative and participatory methods, small-scale farmer segmentation studies.  She has lead teams of market researchers and has trained more than 500 market researchers in Africa and has a strong network within the market and social research sectors.

Melissa has worked extensively to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing.  She has designed and directed point-of-sale studies, habits and attitudes trackers, qualitative studies, product design and development, brand analysis and tracking.  She has worked for all major commercial clients across the continent in fast-moving consumer goods and in services. She has also worked on developing appropriate digital-enabled tools for improvement of information to farmers and to other value chain players like GSMA and UNCDF. Melissa has a Bachelor of Arts degree in West African Anthropology from the University of London.