Nana Afadzinu, executive director of the West Africa Civil Society Institute (WACSI), has worked with and within the civil society sector for the past 22 years and is a passionate advocate for sustainable development in Africa with the full participation of an effective, efficient, influential and sustainable civil society. She is a lawyer by profession and has worked on areas of governance, human rights, philanthropy and capacity development with national, international, continental and regional organisations in Africa. They include the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, National Coalition on Domestic Violence Legislation in Ghana, Women’s Initiative for Self-empowerment (WISE), the African Society of International Law, the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA) and IBIS West Africa.
She is a regular presenter at national, regional and global conferences on issues related to civil society in West Africa. She is currently an adjunct faculty member for the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC) on courses related to governance, human rights, peace and security and gender. Nana has served as a member of a number of public service, corporate and non-profit boards including the Graphic Communications Group Limited (Ghana), the Ghana Legal Services Board, Ghana News Agency Board and GPAK, a subsidiary of the Graphic Communications Group. She currently serves on the Management Committee of the University of Ghana School of Law, the AfDB-CSO Committee, the Governing Council of the Young Africa Leadership Initiative (YALI) Regional Learning Centre for West Africa, the board of the International Society for Third Sector Research (ISTR) and the Star Ghana Foundation board. She is also on the Advisory Council of the SDG Philanthropy Forum in Ghana.
Nana is a member of the Ghana Bar Association, the Pan-African Lawyer’s Union, the African Women Lawyers Association and the Network for Women’s Rights in Ghana.
She is an alumna of the University of Ghana, Faculty of Law, the Ghana School of Law, the Columbia University Human Rights Advocates Program and the New York University School of Law.
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Going beyond Western models of value to shift the power
NGOs in the global south often have to jump through hoops for foreign donors. They are bereft of power in many ways. How can we shift the power to make it more balanced?