This briefing will focus on women’s political participation and developmental growth and issues concerning women in East Africa and surrounding areas. Rachel will discuss recent USG legislation in this area, the Women’s Entrepreneurship and Economic Empowerment Act of 2018 and the Women’s Development and Prosperity Initiative. Saskia will focus on women’s political participation in the African area. There will be moderated questions as well as a chance for the audience to ask the speakers questions.
There will be light snacks.
Speakers:
Rachel Mahmud is a gender and social inclusion specialist and program manager with expertise in women’s empowerment, positive youth development, gender analysis and integration, and project management. She has nearly 10 years of experience working in international development. At Banyan Global, she manages the integration of gender, youth and social inclusion into USAID Feed The Future projects in Ethiopia and DRC, as well as a health commodity supply chain project in Madagascar. Previously, she was a Program Manager for gender and women’s empowerment at the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, an initiative of the United Nations Foundation. She managed more than $1,000,000 in grant funds to local enterprises to scale effective business models for empowering women and youth energy entrepreneurs. While at ACDI/VOCA, she coordinated enterprise development programs based in Mali, Liberia, Ghana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Burkina Faso, and Sri Lanka, including project start-up & close-out, grant management, and training delivery. Rachel holds a Master of Arts in Public Management from Johns Hopkins University and a BA in International Affairs from George Washington University, with concentrations in International Development and African Studies, and a Minor in Geography. She speaks French and English.
Saskia Brechenmacher is a fellow in Carnegie’s Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program, where her research focuses on gender, conflict, and governance, as well as trends in civic activism and civil society repression. Prior to joining Carnegie, Brechenmacher worked as a graduate researcher at the World Peace Foundation in Boston, and served as the coinvestigator for a research project on corruption and state legitimacy in northern Uganda for the Institute for Human Security at Tufts University. From 2015 to 2016, she was a fellow at the Tufts Initiative on Mass Atrocities and Genocide. Brechenmacher is a graduate of Carnegie’s James C. Gaither Junior Fellows Program and also gained experience at Carnegie Europe in Brussels, the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in London, and the EUROPEUM Institute for European Policy in Prague.
Reserve your seat at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/east-africa-development-and-political-challenges-tickets-69906254489?aff=efbeventtix&fbclid=IwAR36uZz7wRWmw14LrS_uqCvZc2Mk-jgnYeDmZcR4CxAxZgl64FKSPtYs8lw
