Dr. Aidoo has extensive experience in philanthropy in Africa. His previous positions include regional program officer for West and Central Africa
Dr. Odaga is the Managing Director for the Dangote Foundation. Previously, she was the Ford Foundation’s representative for West Africa for 11 years, having served as a program officer for
A renowned champion of girls’ and women’s learning, Ms. Bah Diallo is 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’ enrollment. 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. Then from 2005 to 2009 she was the Special Advisor to the Director General of UNESCO for Africa. Ms. Bah Diallo helped found both the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) in 1992 and the Association for Strengthening Higher Education for Women in Africa (ASHEWA) in 2005. She is currently a member of the « Liaison Committee" of NGOs in partnership with UNESCO, and a member of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation’s Prize Committee for Good Governance and Leadership in Africa. Mme Bah Diallo is also a member of the Islamic Development Bank President Advisory Panel (PAP/IDB), and a founding member of the « Réseau des femmes pour l’Egalité Femmes-Hommes ». 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, Chevalier de l’Ordre du mérite de Guinée and the Médaille d’Honneur du Travail de Guinée. She received the « Outstanding Women Leadership Award in 2013, and was one of the 100 Most Influential Africans in 2013 and 2014”. In October, 13 Mme Bah Diallo received a Prize from Premios Magisterio (VII Edition Premios 2015 from Spain). In Guinea, many private as well as public schools are named after her. A school in Senegal is also named after Mme Bah Diallo.
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,
On 28 July 2016, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon named Dr. Natalia Kanem, of Panama, as Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Executive Director (Programme) of UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund.
Dr. Kanem brings to the position more than 25 years of strategic leadership experience in the fields of medicine, public and reproductive health, peace, social justice, and philanthropy. She started her career in academia with the Johns Hopkins and Columbia University schools of medicine and public health. While a Ford Foundation officer from 1992 to 2005, she funded pioneering work in women’s reproductive health and sexuality as the Foundation’s representative for West Africa. She then served in the Foundation’s headquarters, becoming Deputy Vice-President for its worldwide peace and social justice programmes across offices in the United States, Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe.
Dr. Kanem served as founding president of the ELMA Philanthropies Inc., a private institution focusing primarily on children and youth in Africa, since the institution’s inception until 2011. From 2012 to 2013, she was a senior associate of the Lloyd Best Institute of the West Indies, which is dedicated to the development of the Caribbean. Since 2014, Dr. Kanem has been serving as UNFPA Representative in Tanzania.
Dr. Kanem holds a medical degree from Columbia University in New York and a Master’s in Public Health, with specialization in Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, from the University of Washington in Seattle. She is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard University in History and Science.
Fouad Abdelmoumni is a Moroccan human rights activist who has been actively involved in the civil society movement for democracy, good governance, and inclusive development in Africa over the last 35 years. During his youth, Fouad was a prisoner of conscience and disappeared "incommunicado" for 5 years under the regime of Hassan II in Morocco. Subsequently, Fouad was a founding member of the Moroccan Association of Human Rights and a partner of Amnesty International Morocco, and currently serves on an advisory board for Human Rights Watch. Fouad also has extensive experience in the field of inclusive development having pioneered microfinance in Morocco and the MENA region. Fouad helped to found and serve as CEO of Al Amana Microfinance for 13 years (500 clients, 2,100 staff), and subsequently managed rural micro-finance programs covering many African countries, West Africa in particular. Fouad currently serves as the chair of the Board of Transparency International Morocco.
Bishop Malusi Mpumlwana currently serves as the Bishop of the Diocese of Maropeng of the Ethiopian Episcopal Church, where he provides strategic direction to the mission of the diocese and overseeing the pastoral ministrations of priests and lay leaders in his diocese. His mission in the church 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”.
As of April 2014, Bishop Mpumlwana has been part time General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches, spearheading its work to lead common Christian action that works for moral witness in South Africa, addressing issues of social and economic justice, national reconciliation, the integrity of creation, eradication of poverty, and contributing towards the empowerment of all those who are spiritually, socially and economically marginalized. In this context he is charged with spearheading the SACC campaign of The South Africa We Pray For, featuring the five pillars of Healing & Reconciliation, Family Fabric; Poverty & Inequality; Economic Transformation; and Anchoring Democracy – a contribution to the promise of a just, reconciled, peaceful and equitable society, free of racial, tribal and gender prejudices, free of corruption and deprivation, and with enough food and shelter for every citizen; and for each child born to grow to their God given potential. Trained at the Federal Theological Seminary, University of Cape Town and the University of Notre Dame, he follows the contextual theology approach that reflects on momentous challenges and distills those elements that cry out for intervention, failing which history would judge adversely - a Kairos Theology. Previously, Bishop Mpumlwana served for 10 years as the Director of Africa Programs of the Kellogg Foundation. While at the Kellogg Foundation, he oversaw an integrated program designed to promote the socio-economic transformation of the southern African region in this post-Apartheid period.
Omotade “Tade” Akin Aina is the Executive Director of the Partnership for African Social Governance and Research based in Nairobi. Previously, Tade was Program Director, Higher Education in Africa, at the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Tade is an experienced foundation executive whose decade-long tenure in the Ford Foundation’s Nairobi office, including as Regional Representative for East Africa, was marked by innovation and visionary leadership.
Ebrima Sall is the immediate past Executive Secretary of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa, CODESRIA, Africa's leading social research council that was ranked top think tank of Sub-Saharan Africa in the 2016 Goto-Global Think Tanks Report of the University of Pennsylvania.
Prior to becoming the Executive Secretary (April 2009 to June 2017), he was a Senior Programme Officer and Head of Research at CODESRIA for five years (2004-2009). He has also held senior positions in other institutions, including as Managing Director of the Center for the Promotion of Village Savings and Credit Associations (VISACA) in BrikamaBa, The Gambia, which was then under the Gambian Ministry of Agriculture (1992-1994); and Senior Research Fellow and Programme Coordinator at the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala, Sweden (2001-2004). He taught as an adjunct professor at the political science department of Gaston Berger University, in Saint-Louis, Senegal, from 1996 to 2000.
In 1992, he was promoted to the rank of ‘Maitre de Conferences’ (Associate Professor) in ‘sociology-demography’, by the National Commission of Universities of France.
He holds a ‘Maitrise’ (MA) degree in Economic and Social Administration from the University of Grenoble in France, a Diplome d’Etudes Approfondies (DEA) in the Socio-economics of development, and a doctorate in sociology from University of Paris I-Pantheon-Sorbonne.
He was a post-doctoral fellow of Yale University's Program in Agrarian Studies in 1997-98, and is currently a Senior Research Fellow of the Center for African Studies, Harvard University.
Ebrima is the (co-)author/editor of several publications on higher education, academic freedom, the social sciences, social movements, citizenship, governance, and post-conflict transitions in Africa. He is a citizen of The Gambia.
Prior to joining TrustAfrica as an Accountant in 2013, Mr. Diouf worked as a Financial Analyst for Dalberg’s Desk Business Services in Dakar, Senegal. He has consulted as Local Fund Agent Analyst (LFAA) for Global Fund / Save the Children Myanmar, Swiss TPH / CNLS. His experience includes budget review and financial analysis in different sectors including large corporate groups such as CCBM Holding in Dakar. Issa holds a Master in Management and Finance and graduated with honors from UCAD-Ecole Superieure Polytechnique. He also holds a Pre-degree for Chartered Public Accountant (DSC).
