Since our work focuses on helping Africans set our own priorities and craft our own solutions, we believe the composition of our board and staff should reflect this aim. Accordingly, TrustAfrica is governed and led entirely by Africans with extensive experience in philanthropy and development as well as an unwavering commitment to good governance.

Board of Trustees

Fouad Abdelmoumni (Morocco), executive director, Al Amana
Akwasi Aidoo (Ghana), executive director, TrustAfrica
Akwe Amosu (Nigeria), senior policy analyst (Africa), Open Society Institute
Aïcha Bah Diallo (Guinea), advisor to Director-General, UNESCO
Malusi Mpumlwana (South Africa), Bishop, Northern Diocese, Ethiopian Episcopal Church
Adhiambo Odaga (Kenya), representative for West Africa, Ford Foundation
Gerry Salole (Ethiopia/Somalia), chief executive officer, European Foundation Centre
Bahru Zewde (Ethiopia), former executive director, Forum for Social Studies

Fouad Abdelmoumni
Mr. Abdelmoumni is executive director of Al Amana, a Morocco-based microcredit association with a portfolio of 200,000 loans worth US$55 million. He also chairs the SANABEL network of microfinance institutions in Arab countries and serves on the board of Women’s World Banking and the AfriMAP Advisory Committee. His past leadership positions have included membership on the advisory board of the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor and the Advisors Group for the U.N. Year of Microcredit 2005, vice-presidency of the Moroccan Association for Human Rights, and vice-secretary of the Espace Associatif for the promotion of civil society. He holds a degree in economics of development from the University Mohammed V in Rabat and an MBA equivalent from ISCAE (Institut Supérieur de Commerce et d’Administration des Entreprises) in Casablanca. He is a former victim of political repression, having been detained from 1977 to 1980 and disappeared from 1983­ to 1984.

Akwasi Aidoo
Dr. Aidoo has extensive experience in philanthropy in Africa. His previous positions include regional program officer for West and Central Africa at the International Development Centre (IDRC), head of the Ford Foundation’s offices in Senegal and Nigeria, and director of the Ford Foundation’s Special Initiative for Africa. Dr. Aidoo has served on the boards of several nonprofit organizations, including the Resource Alliance, Oxfam America, International Beliefs and Values Institute, Fund for Global Human Rights, Africa Grantmakers’ Affinity Group, and Amandla Development. He was educated in Ghana and the United States, completing his Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Connecticut in 1985, and has taught at universities in Ghana, Tanzania, and the United States. He writes poetry and short stories in his free time.

Akwe Amosu
Ms. Amosu, a senior policy analyst for Africa at the Open Society Institute in Washington, D.C., has more than 20 years of experience in media development, management, production, and negotiating strategic alliances. She previously served as the head of communications at the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) in Addis Ababa, as executive editor of AllAfrica Global Media, and as a senior executive at the British Broadcasting Corporation, where she was responsible for a flagship World Service program and for Africa Service feature programs. She sits on the board of the International Women’s Media Foundation.

Aïcha Bah Diallo
A renowned champion of girls’ and women’s learning, Ms. Bah Diallo hails from Guinea, where she served as Minister of Education from 1989 to 1996, implementing major reforms that strengthened access to primary education and doubled girls’ enrolment. She went on to become a senior education leader at UNESCO, where, from 1996 to 2005, she worked to reduce barriers to education for girls in the world’s least developed countries. Ms. Bah Diallo helped found both the Forum on Women Educationalists (FAWE) in 1992 and the Association for Strengthening Higher Education for Women in Africa (ASHEWA) in 2005. She is currently an advisor to the Director-General of UNESCO on girls’ education in Africa and a member of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation’s Prize Committee. Fluent in six languages (French, English, Spanish, Fulani, Mandingo and Soussou), she holds a B.Sc. degree in chemistry from Penn State University and a postgraduate diploma in biochemistry from the University of Gamal Abdel Nasser in Guinea. For her contributions to the field of education, Ms. Bah Diallo has received the Commandeur des Palmes Académiques françaises as well as the Officier de I’Ordre national de Côte d’Ivoire.

Malusi Mpumlwana
Bishop Mpumlwana heads the Northern Diocese of the Ethiopian Episcopal Church, giving strategic direction to the mission of the diocese and overseeing the pastoral ministrations of its priests and lay leaders. His vision is “to contribute to the making of an all-inclusive African church experience whose spirituality empowers the weak—the poor, women, and the young—and engages the social and economic realities of our time for the common good.” This is in line with his other pursuits, which include chairing the board of South Africa’s National Development Agency, a grantmaking agency that also informs government developmental policies. Bishop Mpumlwana is deputy chair of the President’s Advisory Council on National Orders and sits on the board of the Historic Schools Project, among other nonprofit organizations and corporations. He is currently Senior Associate for Setsing sa Modisa, focusing on platforms for youth development, social giving, and instruments for social security for the poor. He trained at the Federal Theological Seminary and the University of Cape Town, developing his theological work out of the practice of what he calls Kairos Theology, with South Africa’s 1985 Kairos Document as example. It is a theology that reflects on momentous challenges and distills those elements that cry out for intervention, failing which history would judge adversely. In this regard he has worked with other theologians in South Africa, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. Until August 2006, he served as the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Africa Regional Director, providing leadership for its programming in Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe.

Adhiambo Odaga, Treasurer
Dr. Odaga has been the Ford Foundation’s representative for West Africa since November 2001, having previously served as a program officer for environment and microfinance in West Africa. Before joining the foundation, she worked on a project to strengthen the role of the World Bank in promoting female education in Africa and as the International Potato Center’s Social Scientist for West Africa based in Cameroon. She holds a Ph.D. from St. Anthony’s College at Oxford University, which she attended as Kenya’s first Rhodes Scholar.

Gerry Salole, Chairperson
Dr. Salole is chief executive of the European Foundation Centre. He holds an M.A. in economics from the University of Manchester and a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Manchester. His previous posts have included serving as representative of the Ford Foundation’s Southern Africa office, based in Johannesburg, and director of the Department of Programme Documentation and Communication of the Bernard van Leer Foundation, based in The Hague. Previously, Dr. Salole worked for Save the Children Federation (USA) in Ethiopia and Zimbabwe as well as for Redd Barna (Norwegian Save the Children Federation), OXFAM, and UNHCR in his native Ethiopia. He has written extensively on both development work and issues of identity.

Bahru Zewde
Professor Zewde is an eminent historian who now serves as emeritus professor of history at Addis Ababa University. He is a founding member of the Forum for Social Studies, whose board he chaired from 1998 to 2004, and is active in the leadership of several pan-African and subregional associations and research networks. Professor Zewde also authored the seminal text A History of Modern Ethiopia 1885–1991 and Pioneers of Change in Ethiopia: The Reformist Intellectuals of the Early Twentieth Century. He holds a Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.