Research Associates
Benin
Ghana
Kenya
Malawi
Namibia
South Africa
Tanzania
Benin
Mathias Hounkpe, a Benin Citizen and Permanent Resident, has several years experience working in capacity building, governance and institutional development with domains as diverse as good governance and accountability in new democracies, election cycle management, capacity building of democratic institutions (e.g. Parliament, Political parties, Civil Society Organizations, …), institutional development (especially of the Parliament). He has been part of multidisciplinary research teams on subjects as diverse as the assessment of electoral systems and institutions, good governance, elections and public policy related issues. He has designed and implemented training and capacity building activities for evaluation, training and capacity building activities for various key stake holders of electoral processes in Benin and some West-African countries. He is bilingual with proficiency in English and French. He holds an M. Phil in Political science (from Department of Political Science, Yale University) with concentration on accountability mechanism design in new democracies and a doctorate in Mathematical physics (from Mathematical Physics Institute, Benin National University) with concentration on scattering theory.
Azizou Chabi Imorou is a doctoral student at the Johannes Gutenberg University's Anthropology Institute in Mainz, Germany. His dissertation research examines teachers' unions within a larger project entitled 'states at work'. He is currently a Research Associate at the Institute for Empirical Research on Political Economy (IREP) in Benin where he coordinates a project examining social mobility among the first Catholic students in Dahomey. Since 2006 he has been a member of the Social and Local Economic Development Research Laboratory (LASDEL) in Benin. He is also interested in areas including public policy, the civil service in Africa, government and local elections.
Ghana
Regina Oforiwa Amanfo is a Program Officer with the Ghana Center for Democratic Development. She is a Political Scientist and a Public Administration specialist by training. She has experience in research, with special focus on parliamentary work. She plays a leading role in CDD-Ghana’s parliamentary strengthening program, including building the capacity of the research department of Ghana’s Parliament, Parliamentary Committee Clerks and helping to facilitate access to information for Members of Parliament. Ms. Amanfo did one year internship with Southern African Parliamentary Forum (SADCPF) in Windhoek, Namibia. Regina is also the program officer responsible for human rights programs such as protecting the rights of remand prisoners, promoting non-custodial sentencing in Ghana, and HIV/AIDS Anti-Stigma and human rights initiative. She was also involved in the first round of the Afrobarometer, a research project that measures the social, political and economic atmosphere in Africa, as a field coordinator. She is the Center’s focal person on gender.
Kenya
Joshua M. Kivuva is a Fullbright scholar. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh and a BA and MA in Political Science from the University of Nairobi. He is currently a lecturer in the department of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of Nairobi.
Since June 2009 he has been a consultant for South Consulting working on the Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation project, which monitors the implementation of the National Accord. Joshua is in charge of monitoring Agenda Item 4 on constitutional and institutional reforms. Quarterly reports on the projects can be found at www.dialoguekenya.com. He is also a consultant for the Center for Law and Research International (CLARION) on two book projects about Integrity in Kenya’s public service and Kenyan Legislature. He has written and researched on ethnic and legislative politics, and constitutionalism.
Dr. 
Fred Matiangi currently serves as the Chief of Party for the Kenya Parliamentary Strengthening Program. He has more than 12 years experience in democratic development, the last six years of which have been with the Kenya Parliamentary Strengthening Project funded by USAID and DfID, and implemented by the State University of New York’s Centre for International Development.Fred has extensive experience in governance-related research, civil society advocacy work, and the direction of donor-funded democracy and governance projects. Before joining SUNY, Dr Matiangi held prominent positions in civil society and briefly in the public sector in Kenya. He worked before as Head of Research and Deputy Director of the Institute for Education in Democracy. Dr. Matiangi taught at the Literature Department, Faculty of Arts, University of Nairobi for seven years before undertaking post graduate training in Media and Politics in Africa. He also holds a Bachelor of Education degree from Kenyatta University, Kenya, a Master of Arts and PhD. in English from the University of Nairobi.
George Michuki undertook in-country research for ALP in Kenya in 2009. Born in Meru in 1976, he read for a Masters in Development Studies at the University of Nairobi in 2004, and gained a PhD in Development Studies from University of Leipzig, Germany (2005-2008). He is currently a Junior Research Fellow at the Institute for Development Studies, University of Nairobi and his research interests include Governance, Poverty and Livelihood Diversification.
Malawi
Mzee N. Wandembo Nyirongo was born in 1978 in a remote village in Rumphi District the northern region of Malawi. He has got a wide experience with the dynamics of Malawi Democracy & Politics of about 6 years. This include the genesis, current and the focused future trends of Malawi politics.
He is a holder of a Bachelor Science from University of Malawi (UNIMA), Cert. in Computer Programming & Operating and a Diplonma in Computer Systems Analysis and Designing (ACP).
Kimberly Smiddy is the Senior Research Associate of the African Legislatures Project at the University of Cape Town and formerly served as the Project Manager. She is based in Malawi, and as an independent consultant she works as a parliamentary development specialist throughout southern Africa. Kimberly previously served as the Democracy and Governance Advisor at USAID/Malawi where she managed the parliamentary strengthening program implemented by NDI. Kimberly has provided consultancy services for SADC-PF, DFID, the Norwegian Embassy, GTZ, USAID, SUNY, RTI, FES, and UNDP. She has 14 years of parliamentary experience in Africa and has worked in evaluating and designing legislative strengthening programs in many different countries. She has worked with parliaments and MPs in more than 10 countries, including Angola, Bangladesh, Botswana, Kenya, Malawi, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. Kimberly was a PhD candidate, ABD, in Political Science at Michigan State University. She earned her MA in Political Science from Michigan State University with a specialization in African Politics and BA summa cum laude in Political Science and Sociology from the University of Tennessee.
Namibia
Monica Koep is presently employed as Advisor to the Director General of the Namibian National Planning Commission in the Office of the President. Previously, she consulted for USAID/Southern Africa, worked as the Senior Technical Advisor for Democracy and Governance for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Namibia, held managerial positions in the NGO sector and taught at the Universities of Cape Town and Namibia. Koep has been a trustee of the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) since 2000 and its Chairperson since early 2007, has served on the board of the Namibian Chapter of the Misa Trust Fund since 1999 and most recently has been appointed to the newly-established Media Council of Namibia. She obtained her Bachelor’s and Honours degrees at the University of Cape Town and holds an M.Phil in Policy Studies from the University of Stellenbosch.
Gerson Uaripi Tjihenuna is the Director for Rectorate Affairs at the Polytechnic of Namibia. He holds a Diploma in Development Studies and Administration from the then United Nations Institute for Namibia (UNIN), which was based in Lusaka, Zambia. He also holds in BA Degree in Political Science (majoring in International Relations) from the University of Lljubljana (Slovenia) and a Master’s Degree in Public Policy and Administration (MPPA). The latter degree was done as a joint programme between the University of Namibia (UNAM) and the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) at the Hague.
From December 2007 - November 2009, Gerson was working as a freelance consultant in the areas of social research and public policy advocacy. During this period, he provided consultancy services to, inter alia, the University of Cape Town, the ILO, UNICEF and the Namibia Non-Governmental Forum (NANGOF) – the umbrella NGO in Namibia.
From 1990 – 2007, he worked as an Under Secretary in the Cabinet Office of the Republic of Namibia where he was mainly involved in editing policy documents and doing policy analysis. He often contributes feature articles to local newspapers on political and public policy issues.
Ellison Tjirera is a Researcher at the Ministry of Gender Equality and Child Welfare in Namibia. Before joining the Government, Ellison was a Research Intern at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), and shortly became a Junior Researcher and remained a Research Associate at the same Institute. Born in Okondjatu in 1986, he holds a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Sociology and Industrial Psychology from the University of Namibia (UNAM). He did Political Studies and History as Minor Subjects. Ellison Tjirera has a wide range of academic interests encompassing Parliamentary Democracy, Mainstream Governance, Social Research and Sociology of Class. He was a Participant at the Afrobarometer Summer School (2009) at the University of Cape Town, Centre for Social Science Research, and won the ‘Best Research Question Prize’ with his paper entitled: “Women Parliamentary Representation and Perception of Women Empowerment; Is There Any Relationship?”.
South Africa
Dr Cherrel Africa is a senior lecturer at the University of the Western Cape (UWC). She holds a PhD in South African politics from the Department of Political Studies at the University of Cape Town. Dr Africa worked at the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa) for eight years, from 1995 until 2003. She has a wide range of interests including South African politics, democracy and governance, voting behaviour, elections and election campaigns as well as political strategy and communication. Dr Africa also specializes in research methodology and design with a particular emphasis on public opinion and survey research.
Ebrahim Fakir is currently the Manager for the Governance Institutions and Processes department at EISA. He is also Research Associate of the African Legislatures Project, at the University of Cape Town's Centre for Social Science Research. Ebrahim was formerly a Researcher at the Centre for Policy Studies in Johannesburg (2002-2008) and at the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA) at its Pretoria and Cape Town offices (1998-2002) where he did work on South Africa’s Provincial Legislatures and Parliament, and was contributing editor to IDASA’s electronic political journal, E-politcsSA. He also worked at the first democratic Parliament of the Republic of South Africa (1996-1998) and tutored English literature at the then University of Durban Westville (1994-1996). He read for a degree in English Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg and was visiting fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex.
Tim Hughes holds an MA (cum laude) from the University of Cape Town. He was a researcher at UCT’s Institute for Public Policy and lectured at UCT until 2001. Tim established SAIIA’s parliamentary liaison programme in Cape Town and ran SAIIA’s SADC parliamentary research programme, as well as its Lesotho Democracy Programme. He has written a book on South Africa’s foreign policy in the post-apartheid period and was team leader on the SAIIA SADC future scenarios programme. Tim was series editor for the Strengthening Parliamentary Democracy in SADC Reports as well as for a series of papers on opposition politics in SADC. He is the Editor of the SADC Strengthening Parliamentary and Civil Society Relations Handbook.
Tanzania
Max Mmuya is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Dar es Salaam. He has worked with numerous governmental, bilateral and multilateral donor organisations in Tanzania and Kenya. His professional experience encompasses projects with Parliament in Tanzania focusing on Enhancing Parliamentary Capacity. To this end he has carried out a range of institutional designs and evaluations, which include: Constitutional Review of the 1977 Tanzania’s Permanent Constitution; review and redesign of aspects of the Tanzania Parliament and Zanzibar House of Representatives in areas such as: Public Hearings At Constituency Level, production of manuals on Constituency level public hearing on Bills, Organising and Conducting Public Hearings, Committee Level Public Hearings, and Design of Parliamentary Research Services (PRS); and Access to Information for the Tanzania Parliament. He has made an evaluation of the Donor Basket Funded activities for the 2000 elections in Tanzania as well as the electoral processes in the Region (East Africa). He has been involved in Civic Education programs in Tanzania and regionally. He has published numerous papers on democracy, including: Goran Hyden and Max Mmuya (December 2009): Power and Policy Slippage in Tanzania : Sida Studies N0. 21.