IFACCA is pleased to announce Ayeta Wangusa as its Regional Coordinator for Africa, to support IFACCA’s engagement with its members and stakeholders on the continent.
Ayeta Anne Wangusa, is a capacity development specialist, leading Culture and Development East Africa, an organization whose focus is to support East African’s Civil Society to advocate for the mainstreaming cultural concerns into the development agendas of the East African countries supported by policy initiatives. This is within the context of the recognition of culture by the UN as vital to sustainable development and the call for its integration in the post 2015 development agenda.
She served as East Africa’s representative on the Commonwealth Civil Society Advisory Committee (CSAC) and has advised the Commonwealth Foundation on its programming work on Culture, Gender and Governance & Democracy, based on the East African economic, social and economic context. She has been part of the facilitation process leading to the Commonwealth People’s Forum (CPF), through national and sub-regional consultations with civil society organizations in East African and Southern Africa.
She was a member of the High-level Commonwealth Group of Culture and Development, which was established in early 2009 by the Commonwealth Foundation, following calls from civil society at the 2007 Commonwealth People’s Forum to take the role of culture in development as central to development. She was part of core team that drafted the Commonwealth Statement on Culture and Development urging Commonwealth Heads of Government to endorse its findings at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, Trinidad and Tobago, November 2009.
She is a member of the Arterial Network Cultural Policy Task Force and last year represented Arterial Network and CDEA to provide input on culture through the Africa Working Group (AWG) response on the post 2015 development Agenda transformative issues.
She represented Tanzania in the Southern Africa Colloquium on Arts and Culture organized by Arterial Network South Africa that brought together Arterial network chapters and National Arts Councils to discuss policy and practice affecting the sector in Southern Africa.
For more detail on the role of regional coordinators please see: http://ifacca.org/membership/regional_chapters/
We farewell and thank IFACCA’s previous regional coordinator for Africa, Mike van Graan, Executive Director of the African Arts Institute, who served in the role for five years since the fourth World Summit held in Johannesburg, South Africa, in September 2009.