Makhan Sacko

Makhan is a Malian innovation and entrepreneurship professional dedicated to building practical, scalable solutions for inclusive development. After completing his studies in Senegal and Japan, he returned to Mali where he supported local startup ecosystems at Impact Hub Bamako and later led innovation programs at UNDP’s Accelerator Lab. Alongside these roles, he founded Sahel Analytics, a data company offering services in data collection, AI-driven insights, geospatial intelligence, and custom-built interactive platforms to support evidence-based decisions. He also manages Daddy’s Farms, a growing family agribusiness venture focused on sustainable production and transformation. At Princeton, Makhan is focusing on policies for sustainable and inclusive growth, with a particular interest in innovation strategy. He aims to explore how artificial intelligence can power a distributed model of innovation – one that supports different stages of product development and is backed by a catalytic fund to scale high-impact solutions across Africa.