Cynthia Mbamalu is a dedicated human and gender rights advocate and a development practitioner. A lawyer by profession with an LLM in Comparative Constitutional Law from the Central European University (CEU), she specializes in human and women rights advocacy, constitution building, elections and inclusive political leadership. She is a co-founder of Yiaga Africa where she serves as the Director of Programs. In the past 15 years, she has worked especially on supporting sustainable democracies, promoting political inclusion, electoral integrity and human rights.
As the Director of Program for Yiaga Africa, she has participated in and led different election observation missions and currently leads the #WatchingTheVote project, a data and tech-driven initiative for electoral integrity. She was actively involved in the advocacy that led to the adoption of the Electoral Act 2022 in Nigeria and currently engaging in the constitutional amendment process. Cynthia Mbamalu is a founding member of the Not Too Young to Run movement and the Ready to Run campaign, committed to promoting young men and women’s political leadership. She also manages the Community Organizing Program for young people in Nigeria and West Africa.
Cynthia Mbamalu is an alumna of the; Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Leadership, Organizing and Action Executive Program, Central European University (CEU) Course on Constitution-Building in Africa and the University of South Africa (UNISA) Course on Management of Democratic Elections in Africa.