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Amal Mustafa Medani

Board member
Amal is a board member at Afrobarometer

Biography

Amal Mustafa Medani is a development practitioner with more than 25 years’ experience. As a strategic planning, operational, and senior policy adviser, Ms. Medani has led multi-sectoral technical and highly complex development programs from setting organizational vision to results-based policy and program delivery on the ground, often in highly challenging work environments. She has led complex programs that span Southern and Eastern Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, Eastern Europe, as well as global-level programs and policies.

Notably, this includes extensive work experience in international development and policy development efforts for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), including program and policy development work at national, regional and global levels. During her tenure with the UNDP and the United Nations, Ms. Medani served as program officer, UNDP Iraq; regional program officer for the UNDP Arab States Bureau for Regional Programmes and Policies; program manager, United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF/UNDP) focused on local governance, rural development, and decentralization programs in Tanzania, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Yemen; and senior deputy resident representative at UNDP Armenia, where she supported national capacity development efforts including human rights, anti-trafficking programs, national election support, and national poverty reduction policies.

Ms. Medani was seconded by UNDP on special assignment to PricewaterhouseCoopers UK to focus on sustainability solutions/corporate social responsibility initiatives. Thereafter she was director for the Southern Africa Division of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria with a portfolio of USD 4 billion and oversight of 10 countries and 10 national committees, including support to more than 1,000 CSOs/CBOs in Southern Africa.

As associate director of the Governance Department at the United Nations Institute of Training and Research (UNITAR), Ms. Medani oversaw nine Global Local Actors’ Training Centres, engaging local authorities and CSOs supporting local and green governance capacity development. She has also held positions as CEO of the Africa Centre, London, and as senior strategic policy adviser to the CEO of the Global Rollback Malaria Partnership to End Malaria (RBM).

Ms. Medani has made an impact for the organizations she served through strong interpersonal relationships and successful resource mobilization strategies, yielding partnerships with member states, governing bodies and board members, regional offices, the diplomatic community, high-level national authorities, municipal authorities, parliamentarians, the NGO/CBO community, foundations, the private sector, academia, UN agencies, and bilateral donors.

Among her development-related interests are the creative economy, green technologies, and local governance and decentralization.

Ms. Medani is a Sudanese/Swiss national and holds a bachelor’s degree in political science (Middle East and Africa) from Boston University and a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy (M.A.L.D.) degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.

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