EISA's Board of Directors is comprised of stakeholders in the electoral process and civil society from the African continent and beyond. The Board provides strategic leadership and upholds financial accountability and oversight.
Dr Roukaya Kasenally is an Associate Professor in media and political systems at the University of Mauritius and currently the CEO of the African Media Initiative (AMI) since January 2018. AMI is an umbrella organisation that supports independent media on the continent. Prior to that (2012 - 2014), she was the Director of Programmes and Knowledge Management at AMI. Kasenally also has wide experience working in Africa as a consultant for a number of international, Pan African and regional institutions. Kasenally has authored / co-authored a number of publications on media and democratic systems and has held a number of key positions at regulatory and governance institutions in her home country, Mauritius. She is the co-founder of the a local NGO - the Institute for Social Development and Peace (ISDP) and the think tank - Mauritius Society Renewal (MSR).
Kasenally was a Regan Fascell Democracy Fellow (2010-2011) at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and a Draper Hills Democracy Fellow (2015) at Stanford University. She is fluent in English and French and holds a PhD from the University of Sheffield (UK).
Dr Tadjoudine Ali-Diabacte, who obtained his PhD at the University of Lyon III, is former Deputy Director of the Electoral Assistance Division, UN Department of Political Affairs in New York from 2007 to 2016. He served as the Director of the Electoral Division of the UN Department of Peace-Keeping Operations in the DRC from 2003 to 2007and as Chief Technical Advisor for UNDP in the Côte d'Ivoire, Comoros Islands, Guinea, Madagascar and Chad from 2000 to 2003. Before this he was the Senior Electoral Officer for the National Democratic Institute from 1994 to 2000 and as an Electoral Civic Education Officer with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation from 1991 to 1997. He lectured and researched at the University of Togo from 1985 to 2014. From 1992 to 2000 he served as a Member of the Transitional Parliament, a Member of the Constitutional Council and Deputy Chairman of the Togolese Independent National Electoral Commission.
Martha Chizuma is the Ombudsman of the Republic of Malawi, and holds a Master of Laws from the University of East London (2007). She serves as a Commissioner of the Malawi Human Rights Commission, a Commissioner of the Malawi Police Service Commission and a member of Malawi Prison inspectorate. She worked in the private sector as Legal Counsel for major Malawian company from 2011 to 2015. Prior to this, for about 9 years, holding various judicial positions including Senior Resident Magistrate, Assistant Registrar of the High Court and Supreme Court of Appeal and Deputy Chairperson of the Industrial Relations Court.
Professor Tom Lodge (UK) is Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Limerick. He obtained a BA, B Phil and Ph D from the University of York. Before his arrival in Limerick in 2005 he was Professor of Political Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. He has also held positions at the University of York, the Social Science Research Council in New York, and the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa (EISA), where he helped direct research programmes through 1999. In 1999-2000 he was Chair of the Africa Institute in Pretoria. He is the author of six books and two edited volumes. They include Black Politics in South Africa since 1945, Politics in South Africa From Mandela to Mbeki and Nelson Mandela: A Critical Biography in July 2006. He has completed a book on the Sharpeville massacre that will soon be published by Oxford University Press. He has written and researched extensively on elections in Southern Africa including a full length study for EISA on South Africa’s 1999 general election. For EISA he has also compiled a series of handbooks on electoral laws and regulations in various SADC countries.
Charlotte Osei is a member of the Ghana Bar Association and of the International Bar Association, an international elections consultant, lecturer and a published writer. She holds an LLB (Hons) from the University of Ghana; an LLM from Queen's University, Canada and a MBL from the University of South Africa. She served as International Electoral Commissioner to Afghanistan's Electoral Complaints Commission (2019), as Chair of Ghana's Electoral Commission (2015-2018), as Chair of Ghana's National Commission for Civic Education (2011-2015) and as president of the Association of African Election Authorities (2015-2018). She also has served on the Boards of several Ghanaian and international institutions including GCB Bank Limited, Ghana Reinsurance Company Limited, Dominion University College and The African Capacity Building Foundation.
Baïdessou Soukolgué was appointed as EISA's Executive Director from 1 November 2021. He has 15 years of experience in the field of institutional capacity building and electoral assistance, at ever increasing levels of responsibility. After two and a half years with the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) as a National Expert responsible for capacity building for non-state actors (Dec 2006 - June 2009), he joined EISA in July 2009 and has occupied a number of positions and been deployed to several EISA field offices, including Chad, Madagascar, Central African Republic, Mali, Burundi. Prior to his appointment as Executive Director, he was the Head of the Elections and Political Processes Department at the Regional Office in Côte d'Ivoire. He has extensive experience in developing and publishing election related programmes and handbooks. Baïdessou Soukolgué has lectured at the National School of Administration in Chad (2009-013) and was an assistant lecturer in the Department of Law, University of N'Djamena, Chad (2004-2009).
Professor John Stremlau is Visiting Professor, International Relations, at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa and a visiting Bradlow Fellow at the South African Institute of International Affairs. He served from January 2006 until January 2015 as vice president for peace programs at The Carter Center, where he oversaw the Center's programs to advance human rights, democracy, and conflict resolution globally; regional cooperation in the Americas; and promotion of grassroots democracy, rule of law, and social justice in China. From 1998 to 2006, he resided in South Africa where he was Jan Smuts Professor, Head of the International Relations Department, and the founding co-director of the Centre for Africa's International Relations at the University of the Witwatersrand. Previously, he served as senior adviser to the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict in Washington, D.C. (1994-1998), deputy director for policy planning in the office of the U.S. Secretary of State (1989-1994), strategic planning officer for the World Bank (1988-1989), and an officer of the Rockefeller Foundation (1974-1987), directing its international relations division from 1984-1987. Prof. Stremlau publishes extensively on foreign affairs and is a frequent media commentator on international network news programs. He authored 'The International Politics of the Nigerian Civil War' and edited several books.
