Idayat Hassan is director of the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), an Abuja based policy advocacy and research organization with a focus on deepening democracy and development in West Africa. She has overseen CDD's rise from being unranked in 2013 to 16th out of 94 think tanks in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to the 2019 University of Pennsylvania Global Go To Think Tank Index Report. She has strengthened CDD's position as a civic tech leader with a portfolio of projects, including, but not limited to: analyses of the relationship between social media platforms, election processes and electoral outcomes, using an mobile app to identify electoral fraud and analyzing the use of personal data in political campaigning in Nigeria. Her work on social media has been discussed and covered by the Economist, BBC and in scholarly publications such as the Journal of Democracy.

Hassan is a lawyer and awarded fellowships at the Columbia University in New York, Yale University amongst others. Her insights on governance and development in Nigeria and West Africa are regularly sought by BBC, RFI, Bloomberg, the Financial Times, the Guardian, and Deutchse Welle. She is also a regular panelist on leading Nigerian television programs. Her interests span democracy, peace and security, transitional justice, and ICT4D across West Africa. She tweets at @hassanidayat.