Nigeria

Development Economist

I have 20 years of experience in development cooperation, I have been working for three years now as an independent consultant carrying out evaluations and monitoring for the European Union, NGOs and international organisations mostly in Africa.

Geraldine is a highly qualified international development professional with a strong commitment to advancing social and gender justice, with more than three decades of experience. She is flexible, efficient, resilient, adaptable and able to work across functional boundaries and within a multi-disciplinary context. She can think clearly, see the bigger picture, values and is able to integrate multiple perspectives within complex environments and is able to understand and articulate complex and/or multidimensional issues to support decision-makers. While she is an experienced team leader, she strongly believes in the need to function as part of a cohesive and dedicated goal-driven team.

Her research, development and change management activities with a focus on the intersectional nature of poverty, exclusion and marginalization take place within complex, multi-disciplinary contexts relating to social empowerment, organisational development, communication, stakeholder participation and institutional and individual change management. She has a depth and breadth of experience in the promotion of integrity, good governance and the advancement of public sector competence and capacity. She has, for many years, actively worked with government to develop change management strategies that address the realities of services delivery within a severely constrained environment, in particular related to urban, peri-urban and rural WASH.

A specific focus of her work through the years has addressed the gender related constraints and challenges to development within the sub-Saharan African urban, peri-urban and rural contexts. Her training and work are grounded in cross-cultural sensitivity, interpersonal, communication and negotiation skills. She has extensive experience in quantitative and qualitative research and analysis of gender issues and social inclusion, including within the context of international social safeguard policies and conventions.

She has functioned as lead consultant for the onsite assessment of gender and human rights in several countries, including Malawi, South Africa, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo and has developed advocacy, outreach, development and mainstreaming guidelines and management plans on gender, women’s rights and social inclusion for international development partners and the private sector. She has promoted a human rights-based approach in development initiatives dealing with gender equality and women's rights.

She is highly skilled in institutional, organisational and individual change management, transition management, communication, consensus building and governance support. She has been trained in the identification of constraints and barriers to the planning and implementation of change management processes, especially in respect of development within an intersectional poverty context. Her work at strategic conceptual level has consistently been supported by her hands-on experience of working at and engaging with issues at grassroots level where the (positive and negative) impacts of policies and strategies are experienced most keenly.