Hilda M. Tadria
Dr Hilda Tadria is Ugandan, and a co-founder of the AWDF. She has a degree in Sociology from Makerere University, an MA in Social Anthropology from Newham College, Cambridge, UK and a Doctorate in Social Anthropology from the University of Minnesota, USA.
She has been a consultant on Gender and Development, institutional management development and social development research at the World Bank, UNDP, UNIFEM, the Ugandan government and other international agencies such as the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and NOVIB. She was an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Makerere University, and was a Senior Consultant, Women in Development at the Eastern and Southern Management Institute based in Tanzania; she also served as the country resident representative in Zimbabwe for the Institute. In the early 90s she was a Programme Officer with the African Capacity Building Foundation.
She was a private consultant for five years till her appointment as the Special Advisor on Gender to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. While she was lecturing at Makerere University she founded the women’s NGO known as Action for Development (ACFODE). She has extensive field research experience in participatory and qualitative research methodologies both at rural community level and corporate organisational level. She has published a number of papers on Gender and Development.
Joana Foster
Joana Foster, a co-founder of the AWDF, has been a social activist for over thirty years. She became a member of the Campaign against Nuclear Disarmament at 17. All through her life she has been involved in founding organisations and supporting initiatives for social justice.
Joana is a qualified lawyer in the UK and in Ghana, the country of her birth. She has practiced in both countries for many years, concentrating on Civil and Political Rights in Ghana, and Immigration and Women’s Rights in the UK.
In her spare time, she has been involved in activism around poverty, race equality and women’s rights. She gave legal advice voluntarily to the Preschool Playgroup Association of England and Wales for three years as their honorary legal adviser. She provided the same pro bono service to various women’s centres and black organisations in the UK.
Joana’s experience includes being a Trustee of the Child Poverty Action Group of the UK and in the 1990s entering the NGO sector full time first as the Country Director of CUSO, Ghana, a Canadian Non-Profit organisation committed to social justice around the world. She was also the Regional Coordinator of Women in law and Development in Africa, a leading women’s rights network in Africa, a post she held for four years. WILDAF is a pan-African network of organisations and individuals dedicated to promoting and strengthening strategies that link law and development to increase the capacity of women to enjoy all their human rights. She is also one of the founders of the Gender and Human Rights Documentation Centre based in Accra, Ghana.
Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi
Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi is the Executive Director and a co-founder of the AWDF. With an academic background in History, Cultural Anthropology and Gender studies, she has acquired professional experience as a social change philanthropist, social entrepreneur, journalist, fundraiser, trainer, and organizational development specialist.
Prior to her work at AWDF, she was Director of Akina Mama wa Afrika (AMwA), an international development organisation for African women based in London, UK, with an Africa regional office in Kampala, Uganda, from 1991-2001. While she was the Director of AMwA, she established the African Women’s Leadership Institute, a training and networking forum for young African women. The leadership institute she developed has become such a powerful legacy that today, the AWLI has trained over 6,000 women across Africa, and most of these women are now in senior decision making positions as Ministers, Members of Parliament, academics, civil society leaders, and employees of international organizations.
Bisi served as a Trustee of Comic Relief (UK) for three years and a member of their Africa Grants Committee for five years. She was elected President, Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID), from 2003-2005, and she has served as a Co-Chair, International Network of Women’s Funds, an international network of grant making organisations for women (2004-2006). She is currently an Adviser to Global Fund for Women (USA), Mama Cash Foundation (The Netherlands), Editorial Board Member of Alliance Magazine (UK) a board member of Resource Alliance (UK) board member of the International Women’s Health Coalition and Advisory Board member of Realising Rights: The Ethical Globalisation Initiative. She was appointed the Dame Nita Barrow Distinguished Visitor in Women and Development and Community Transformation for the academic year 2000/01, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada. She is a Synergos Institute Senior Fellow, a forum for senior leaders of philanthropic institutions. In 2005, she received an award from the Sigrid Rausing Trust (UK) for outstanding contributions to women’s rights. In April 2007, she received the `Changing the face of Philanthropy’ award given by the Women’s Funding Network in the US. She has also served as a resource person to UN agencies such as UNIFEM, UNDP, UN/ECA and several other regional and international bodies.
Elizabeth Lwanga
Elizabeth has over thirty years experience in development work with a focus on programme development including policy formulation, project/programme design, implementation and evaluation. Her experience includes five years working with national governments, fifteen years with non-governmental organisations and seventeen years with the United Nations (UN). Elizabeth’s special areas of interest and expertise include policy dialogue with governments, management of development in crisis or special circumstances and coordination of humanitarian assistance, institutional development, partnership building with civil society, private sector and donor community, personnel management, inter-agency coordination, programme analysis, development support communication, information and communication, radio and television production, gender analysis, and the advancement of women in development.
Elizabeth currently works as a consultant focusing on innovations in development approaches, with special interest in leadership development and local level investment in Africa. She has recently been involved in establishing two organisations that focus on Africa’s development. These are: Africa Development Alternatives (ADA), which focuses on transforming people’s lives through interventions in the areas of governance, social and economic development, management, communications and advocacy; and African Capacity Matters (ACM), whose objective is to develop and strengthen capacities for Africa’s development. Elizabeth has recently retired as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Resident Representative and Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator of the UN System Operational Activities in Kenya. She served as Deputy Regional Director, UNDP Africa Bureau from August 2003 to October 2006. Formerly, she served as the UNDP Resident Representative and Coordinator of United Nations System in Swaziland for over four years. She also served for almost five years as Resident Representative, Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Sierra Leone; and Manager of the UNDP Gender in Development Programme in New York from 1992 to 1994, after a 14 month posting as UNDP Deputy Representative in the Gambia.
Prior to joining UNDP, Elizabeth served as Africa Director for OXFAM America between 1989 and 1990. For three years between 1985/88 Elizabeth worked as a consultant to United Nations Fund for Women (UNIFEM), UNESCO, International Labour Organisation (ILO), Organisation of African Unity (OAU), the World Bank, the World Council of Churches, and the African Women Task Force on the International Decade for Women. Her previous positions include work as Director for Communications for the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC) and Director of the AACC Training Centre, television producer/director and script writer in Uganda and in Kenya.
Nozipho January-Bardill
Nozipho January-Bardill is the MTN Group Executive: Corporate Affairs and MTN Group Spokesperson. She joined MTN from the Department of Foreign Affairs where she was the Deputy Director-General and Head of Human Resources in the Foreign Service Institute.
She served as South Africa’s Ambassador to Switzerland, from 2001 to 2005. In January 2000 Nozipho was appointed to and served as one of 18 members of the United Nations Expert Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) until March 2004. She has been active in the women’s movement in South Africa having worked as lead officer with the Office on the Status of Women in the Presidency in the drafting of the current National Policy on Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality.
Nozipho’s experience cuts across the public, private, education and voluntary services with varied experiences which includes serving as Commissioner on the Black Empowerment Commission, serving on the Council of the University of Cape Town and serving on the boards/being a founding member of several NGOS including the Gender Education and Training Network, the African Gender Institute at University of Cape Town and the Institute for Democratic Alternatives in South Africa.
Prof. Sesae Mpuchane
Professor Sesae Felicity Mpuchane is South African. She has a BS degree from Columbia University, MS degree in Medical Microbiology from Ohio University and a PhD in Food Microbiology.
Professor Mpuchane served as the coordinator of the University of Botswana “Women in Science” project. The team was involved in various activities including conducting visits to schools to encourage girls to pursue science careers, organizing science clinics at UB that brought girls from schools all over the country to be exposed to instrumentation and to be mentored, participation in career fairs, job shadowing activities and the production of seven booklets for schools ( Careers in Computing; Careers in Science; Careers in Mathematics; Careers in Engineering; Careers in Agriculture; Encourage your daughter to do Science and profiles of some Batswana women Scientists). A documentary on the lives of six Botswana women scientists was produced and screened on the local BTV. In 2005, the US Embassy gave her an award, the “Botswana Vanguard Women Leaders” for her work. She has been involved in a number of fundraising activities at UB and in other organizations.
She is a member of the Third World Organization of Women in Science (TWOWS), and the International Association of Milk, Food and Environmental Sanitarians (IAMFES).
Mary Wandia
Mary Wandia is an African feminist whose feminist journeys started at the African Women’s Development and Communications Network (FEMNET) in 1999 where she worked as a Programme Officer leading on advocacy around gender mainstreaming in the transition from the Organisation of African Unity to the African Union (AU), as well as trade and financing for development. Until March 2009, she worked as the Women’s Rights Coordinator at the Africa Secretariat of Action Aid International in Nairobi, and is currently working as the Pan Africa Gender Justice and Governance Lead at Oxfam’s Pan Africa Programme.
For the past ten years Mary has contributed to women’s rights advocacy work at the national, sub-regional and regional levels in Africa. She is one of the co-founding members of the Solidarity for African Women’s Rights (SOAWR) that advocates for the implementation of the AU Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa. Mary is a member of the African Feminist Forum Working Group and an alumni of, and member of the training faculty of the African Women’s Leadership Institute (AWLI). Mary is the Interim Chair of the Board of Directors of the Centre for Citizens’ participation on the African UNION (CCP-AU).
Mary is very optimistic that the African Union is a viable institution for promoting and advancing women’s rights. In her opinion it is still male dominated and its ways of working very patriarchal, however women have begun to challenge this. In her own words, ‘there is a lot of work in the years ahead that will demand our creativity, passion and commitment as African feminists to ensure that our issues are entrenched in all the AU’s processes, protocols and practices. I am delighted to be part of that struggle.’
