A pan-African feminist with roots in Cameroon, Françoise Moudouthe is passionate about advocating for women’s rights and fostering sisterhood within African feminist movements.

Before joining the African Women’s Development Fund as CEO, Françoise established Eyala, a bilingual platform that amplifies the voices and lived experiences of African feminists, and worked as an international consultant for gender justice in Africa. She also played an instrumental role in incubating Girls Not Brides, the global civil society partnership to end child marriage, and in spearheading its growth in Africa.

Françoise is a Board member of the Malala Fund and Womankind Worldwide.

Pontso has over 25 years of experience working in social justice, particularly women and girl’s rights in Africa; themes and contexts that have both impacted and inspired her personally and professionally. She is a keen supporter of the leading contribution that African women and their organisations across the world make to the feminist transformation of women’s rights in Africa and worldwide. Her track record includes successful work addressing violence against women, women’s leadership, and economic strengthening with diverse organisations including Action Aid, Comic Relief, International Planned Parenthood Federation, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, and as a freelance consultant. She also has decades of experience in strategy development and delivery, programme development and implementation, philanthropy and grant making, resource mobilisation, training and facilitation and people and project management.

Pontso has been a member of Steering Committees for The Red Umbrella Fund and The Girl Generation, is a Board member of EMpower – The Emerging Markets Foundation and Make Every Woman Count, and was selected twice as one of the BBC 100 Women.

Gertrude Bibi Annoh-Quarshie is in charge of leading and directing the operations, finance, human resource and administrative functions of AWDF to ensure they are of the highest quality. She will be responsible for designing, developing and implementing short to long term strategies aimed at optimising AWDF’s general support systems and complex financial management systems.

She is a chartered certified accountant with over 16 years of experience in audit, finance, accounting and administration in not-for profit as well as for profit organisations. Since joining AWDF in 2007, she has contributed to strengthening the processes, policies, systems and structures that ensure that AWDF remains a credible and sustainable organisation. She authored a publication on good practice in financial management for women’s rights organisations.

She is a Fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) of the United Kingdom, and the Institute of Chartered Accountants Ghana (ICAG). She has a B.S. degree and an Executive MBA in Finance from the University of Ghana. She currently sits on the board of ISIS-WICCE/WIPC a regional feminist organisation with a mission to ignite women’s leadership, amplify their voices and deepen their activism in re-creating peace.

Gertrude is passionate about women’s rights and the pursuit of dignity, equality, respect and justice for African women and girls. Integrity and ethical leadership are at the forefront of her personal and professional values, influencing her day-to-day decision making and actions.

Beatrice is the Grants Manager at the African Women’s Development Fund with the key responsibility of providing leadership and direction for the grants making function. Beatrice also manages the HIV/AIDS portfolio at the Fund. Beatrice has a Masters’ Degree in Communication Studies and an Executive Masters in Business Administration from the University of Ghana. She also holds an LLB from the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA). Beatrice is an expert in grant-making design and management and community development programmes with special expertise in the areas of public health and social research. She has special interest in working with small women’s groups.

Zeytuna Abdella Azasoo has expertise in project management, policy formulation and analysis, strategic development planning, and monitoring and evaluation. She has coordinated and managed public and private programmes for local and international organizations for over 22 years in Ethiopia and in Ghana. She holds Master’s Degree in economics and statistics and two post-graduate diplomas in urban poverty reduction and children, youth and development. She also holds a diploma in commerce and accounting. Zeytuna is a member of International Development Evaluation Association and alumna of International program for development evaluation training.

Vivian Korkor Acheampong, the Human Resources Manager is responsible for leading the development of HR Strategy, Processes, Systems and Interventions to ensure the alignment of the HR role to the AWDF’s Strategy.

Vivian, a certified HR Practitioner of the Institute of Human Resource Management Practitioners (IHRMP), Ghana, is poised to contribute to the human resource management discourse to promote paradigm shift at the national and global levels. She has practiced mainly in the non-governmental and public sectors and has tremendous skills in HR strategy development, planning and implementation of organisational redesign/restructuring and the development of HR policies and manuals. Vivian also has excellent skills in change management processes and has led teams to develop reward-based Performance Management Systems {PMS} to promote team motivation and increased productivity in Ghana. Beyond Ghana, she has supported the development of some organisations in the International Non-Governmental sector of some African countries including Liberia, DRC and Somaliland.

Vivian holds a Master of Arts degree in Development Studies specializing in Human Resources and Employment (HRE} from the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) now Erasmus University in The Hague, the Netherlands. She also has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and Political Science from the University of Ghana, Legon and Certificates in Public Administration and Organisation Development. Her strong people’s skills combined with her academic background and experience enable her to blend HR practice with development and rights-based issues in a unique way. She has special interests in safeguarding and corporate governance issues.

Hellen is a proficient Chartered Accountant with over 12 years’ experience in corporate reporting, external audit, internal controls, treasury management, taxation and corporate governance.

Prior to joining AWDF she was the Chief accountant of RMG Ghana Ltd. She also worked as an audit senior at Ernst & Young Ghana where she acquired experience in diverse industries amongst others manufacturing, extractive, construction, finance and governmental sector.

Hellen is a member of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA-UK), she holds a Bachelor’s degree in Commerce (B’com) from University of Cape Coast and an Executive MBA (Finance) from University of Ghana Business School, Legon.

She is passionate about the total well-being of women and the African woman for that matter. She enjoys reading and listening to music.

Abena Bomo AFARI joined AWDF in November 2018 as a Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Associate. She completed her national service at the Ghana Institute of Languages, where she taught French. She has a bachelor’s degree in French and Marketing from Central university and a Master’s degree in Gender, Peace and Security from the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Center.

She is passionate about women’s rights issues and issues of conflict in Africa.

Although her past career was in the financial sector, Ayesha Abukari has always had a passion for development work and advancing women’s rights issues. She worked with the Africa 2000 Network (UNDP) to complete her national service by making direct impact with project beneficiaries.

She holds a B.A in Integrated Development Studies from the University of Development Studies, Ghana, and is currently pursuing an M.B.A. in Marketing at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA).

Abigail is a young bilingual international development professional with about four years of work experience with international organizations. She has in her career supported international development teams in areas such as administration, procurement and event coordination.
She joins the AWDF as a Bilingual Capacity Building Assistant supporting with the implementation of the work of the Capacity Building Unit. Through this role, she aspires to be able to explore her passion for feminism and African development and to be able to continue a strong and impactful career in international development especially as it pertains to gender.
Abigail holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in French and Political Science from the University of Ghana, Legon and a Diploma in French Language Studies from the University of Abomey, Calavi.

Dinnah Nabwire is responsible for steering institutional initiatives to generate, analyse and utilise knowledge to shape sustainable feminist philanthropy in Africa.

For 10 years, Dinnah has led research, documentation, learning, policy and advocacy for nonprofits with placements in Uganda and Washington DC. Most recently, she led technical collaborations for the research to practice transition of the Uganda Ministry of Gender-led Violence Against Children Survey (VACS). She also managed the establishment of a community-led model learning site in Northern Uganda which was co-created from the VACS data, a corroborative formative qualitative study and lessons from implementing the national INSPIRE strategies’ pilot in Central Uganda.

Dinnah holds a Masters of Gender, Education and International Development from the University College London and a Bachelors’ of Social Work from the Uganda Christian University.

She is a prochoice feminist, passionate about sexual and reproductive health rights for women. She is an everyday Rotarian, a lover of art and a walker.

Malaika Aryee-Boi is the Knowledge Management Assistant forming part of the Knowledge Management Team to steer AWDF towards buiding, creatively utilising and connecting African women’s voices, experiences and learning to shape feminist philanthropy. As part of her role, she also manages AWDF’s Knowledge Exchange Platforms.

Malaika holds a bachelor’s degree in History from Yale University where she focused on studying empires and colonialism around the world. She is especially interested in gender and sexuality, memory and decolonisation. Before joining AWDF, she worked at Legon’s Institute of African Studies as a TA for her national service.

She is passionate about African feminism and believes in the power of collective efforts to transform our society into one where the most marginalised can live with dignity and love.

I am a queer Black African anarchist feminist. My identities as a queer Black African anarchist feminist mean that I have made a commitment to combining Black African feminism, anarchism and queer politics to living a life of labour that works towards dismantling white supremacy, capitalism and heteronormative patriarchy. I foreground a power and gendered analysis in my work and praxis
I have worked within civil society since 2001. I am passionate about creating and generating ideas, advocacy and justice, sustaining activism through healing and knowledge production, and to ensure the visibility, voices and lived experiences of African women in all their diversity in dismantling systems and institutions of oppression. I believe in Black African feminism, queer and anarchist politics to inform not only the work we do and the way we do it, but to also forge a path that will lead to individual and collective creation, healing and love.

Abigail is the Administrative Assistant at the AWDF and comes to the fund with over 6 years experience in the field of administration. Her role at the fund includes providing support to the HR Manager and ensuring that the administrative needs of both staff and visitors are well catered for.

Prior to joining AWDF, she worked as an Administrative Assistant for Charles Kendall & Partners: Fiscal & Procurement Agents for the Millennium Development Authority (MIDA) Ghana project. Abigail holds a BSc. in Management with Computing (HR Option) from the Regent University College of Science & Technology and also has the following certificates to her credit; Higher National Diploma in Secretaryship & Management Studies from Accra Polytechnic and a Private Secretaryship Certificate from NACVET.

Sarah is an Administrative Assistant (Procurement) responsible for administrative duties relating to organising and coordinating procurement activities to support an efficient procurement framework within AWDF.

Prior to joining AWDF, she had worked at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital for her National Service. Sarah is a graduate of Accra Polytechnic with HND in Purchasing and Supply.

She is passionate about seeing tangible results from work completed and giving fair treatment to everyone. Sarah is a strong believer in women’s rights to equal opportunities.

Sylvia is an Administrative Assistant at the AWDF. With the field of administration a familiar turf for her, she brings on board over 10 years’ practice. She provides the HR Manager with administrative support and prides herself with leaving all her visitors with ineradicable smiles of contentment.

Preceding her role at AWDF, she was the Administrative Assistant for the Ambassador of the Embassy of the Czech Republic. She completed the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology with a degree in English and French, a certificate in International Relations and Diplomacy from the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration, and a diploma in Human Resource Management from ICM – UK.

Among the values that Sylvia upholds and imbues into all who come into contact with her are: respect, accountability and integrity. She aspires to be enlisted among the prominent names of women called to the bar.

Mavis joined AWDF in January 2007 and has 10 years’ experience in Financial Management in the NGO sector. She is a Member of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (UK) and an alumna of University of Coast where she studied Accounting and Economics. She is passionate about children and believes every child is unique and with the right environment and exposure they can achieve their full potential.

Afi’s responsibilities in the Finance Department include working to achieve the objectives of the day to day operational management, processing Grants payments and managing the Fixed Assets of the organisation. She is a student of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) and a graduate from the University of Cape Coast with a Bachelor of Commerce. Afi believes her years with AWDF have been an ideal foundation for developing both her financial expertise and passion for African women’s rights.

Sheila ANUM is passionate about women’s right issues and empowering of the African woman. She believes that women often excel when they are empowered. Prior to joining the AWDF, she worked with the Amaris Terminal Limited.

Sheila Anum is a graduate of Valley View University, Oyibi with a degree in Business Administration, Banking and Finance Option.

Janet Okumi is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, Ghana, Institute of Internal Auditors, Global and a student member of the Chartered Institute of Taxation, Ghana. She holds a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Ghana Business School, Legon in Accounting.

She is currently employed by African Women Development Fund (AWDF) as the Due Diligence Officer, having previously worked for West Africa Program to Combat AIDS and STIs, Ghana (WAPCAS-Ghana) as the Internal Audit Manager. Prior to her employment at Ghana-WAPCAS, Janet worked with Kwame Asante and Associates (KAA) as the Assistant Manager in the Audit & Assurance service line.

Janet has over 7 years of professional experience in both public and private sectors. Her hobbies include reading, listening to gospel music and watching wildlife documentary.