Kemi Ogunsanya

South Africa (Regional Expert: Sub-Saharan Africa)

Kemi Ogunsanya is a senior conflict resolution training officer with the African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD), a non-governmental organization specializing in conflict management. Created in 1992 to address difficulties in South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy, ACCORD’s focus has broadened to include continent-wide issues, offering innovative solutions to African challenges. Ms. Ogunsanya is skilled in negotiation, mediation, facilitation, and popular decision making and has extended her training beyond conflict management to include conflict prevention, democracy, and human rights. She has conducted conflict resolution training for women’s groups in countries throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, including Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, South Africa, and Sudan; and she has lectured on women, economics, and the labor market. Ms. Ogunsanya holds a barrister of law degree from the Nigerian Law School and a master’s degree in law from the University of Natal in Durban. She was born and educated in Nigeria.

Ms. Ogunsanya’s peace-building activities include:

• training Congolese women for participation in the Sun City peace talks, which brought together Congolese representatives from government, political parties, rebel groups, and civil society;
• participating as an international expert at a consultative meeting in Uganda on UN Security Council Resolution 1325, which calls for the inclusion of women in peace processes;
• training parliamentarians from Intergovernmental Authority for Development member states in advanced negotiation and mediation;
• organizing training programs and curricula on peacekeeping with numerous sectors of civil society, including domestic observers and monitors in Nigeria for the 1998 national elections, public health officials in the South African province KwaZulu-Natal, and military, police, and civilian peacekeepers at the South Africa Development Community Regional Peacekeeping Centre in Harare, Zimbabwe;
• coordinating projects on peace-building and conflict prevention, such as the Youth Development Program with young people from Northern Ireland and South Africa, and the Sudanese Women’s Study Tour to South Africa with women’s organizations from the north and south of Sudan;
• directing workshops on conflict resolution, post-conflict reconstruction, and reconciliation at universities in South Africa; and
• offering legal aid as a human rights lawyer to indigent citizens and prisoners awaiting trial with the Justice Development and Peace Commission of the Catholic Diocese of Ijebu-Ode in Nigeria.

return to top