In this week’s episode, Mavis Owusu-Gyamfi from African Centre for Economic Transformation (ACET) de-centres the focus on racism and colonialism, and instead brings attention to the range of power dynamics present in the development and humanitarian ecosystems, including gender, class, and the historical origins of certain organisations.
Mavis discusses the institutional sustainability of Global South-based organisations where they are often not considered the first choice by either Global North organisations or Africa-based governments and national partners, despite their considerable capacity.
She describes the transformative approach ACET is implementing, through which African institutions work together to grow capacity in tendering and contract delivery, thereby strengthening the network of Think Tanks across the continent. By doing this, they are demonstrating agency and flipping the narrative on the decolonisation and localisation agenda, which has been historically driven by the Global North.
Mavis Owusu-Gyamfi is Executive Vice President of African Centre for Economic Transformation (ACET). Mavis oversees ACET’s strategy and leadership, and is responsible for ensuring the organisation is respected as a robust pan-African economic policy institute.
Mavis has built a distinguished career over 25 years in international development. Born in Ghana, she is a political economist by training and a private sector development specialist. She previously worked at the UK Department for International Development (DFID), where she led the creation and implementation of DFID’s first private sector development strategies in a number of countries. More recently, she worked as the Director of Program Policy at Save the Children. In 2016, she joined a newly established NGO, the Power of Nutrition, as its Director of Investments, overseeing rapid growth across a dozen African and Asian countries.
She holds an MPhil from the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, and an MPhil in Development Studies (Economics and Political Economy Analysis). Mavis is a member of the Board of Directors for Results for Development and Sightsavers International and an Independent Member of the Strategic Coherence of ODA Funded Research (SCOR) Board.If you’re interested to find out more about Mavis’ work, take a look here:
