Oka Obono collaborated with UNRISD for the project Social Policy in Late Industrializers: Sub-Saharan Africa and the Challenge of Social POlicy 2002-2004. At the time of his collaboration with UNRISD, Obono taught sociology at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Previously, Obono taught at the University of Calabar (1990-1997), and had held a two-year Andrew Mellon post-doctoral fellowship at Brown University, USA (2000-2002).
He holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Sociology (University of Calabar), and a doctorate in Sociology (specializing in Demography and Population Studies) from the University of Ibadan. He has strong research interests in southern Nigerian institutional processes encompassing health, gender, fertility, infertility, migration theory, HIV/AIDS studies, cultural aspects of epidemiological interventions, and the dynamics of population policy development.