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Dr. IBRAHIM BANGURA

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Dr. IBRAHIM BANGURA PhD

Dr Ibrahim Bangura is an Associate Professor at the University of Sierra Leone with more than twenty years’ experience providing advisory, training, monitoring and other technical services to governments, international and intergovernmental organisations including the African Union (AU), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and agencies of the United Nations (UN) on youth, governance, human rights, gender and security policies. He has also served for the last 15 years as a Results-Oriented Monitoring Expert assessing European Union funded projects and programmes in Africa.

Biography

History of Dr. Ibrahim Bangura

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Professional History

Ibrahim Bangura has spent a greater part of his professional life in international development and academia as an independent consultant and academic. He began his career in 2004 in child protection with a local Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) known as the Post-Conflict Reintegration Initiatives for Development and Empowerment (PRIDE). This was a period in which the end of the civil war in Sierra Leone had left behind a litany of social challenges including thousands of Children Formerly Associated with Armed Groups and street children. His work with PRIDE, an organisation which he subsequently headed in 2005, helped transform the lives of many young people. In 2007, he served as the first Senior Human Rights Officer of the then newly established Human Rights Commission where he contributed to raising awareness on human rights. He then moved to the Netherlands where he worked as a partner of Transition International; a consultancy firm specialised in the socio-economic reintegration of ex-combatants. In 2010, he was employed as the Programme Manager of the Building Global Cooperation Unit of the Wittenberg Center for Global Ethics in Lutherstadt, Wittenberg, Germany. The centre was established by Ambassador Andrew Young, the Former Mayor of Atlanta and Hans-Dietrich Genscher, former Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor of Germany. As an academic, Ibrahim has over fifty publications to his name and taught thousands of students at universities and centres of learning including the University of Sierra Leone, the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC) in Ghana, the Folke Bernadotte Academy (FBA) in Sweden, and the Barcelona International Peace Center (BIPC). He continues to mentor emerging scholars in Africa, through the African Peace-building Network (APN), and the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA). He has also co-published with several emerging scholars as a means of providing them with platforms to showcase African scholarship. Dr Ibrahim Bangura is specialised in Security, Gender, Youth and Rights Based Approaches to development. He is a leading expert on Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration approaches offering technical expertise and training to governments and international organisations in Africa, Europe, South America including in countries such as Colombia, South Sudan, Uganda, Sudan, Central African Republic, Côte d'Ivoire, Somalia, and Liberia. Ibrahim has vast experience in monitoring and evaluation, strategy and programme development. He is a leading Results-Oriented Monitoring Expert through which he has assessed more than 100 European Union (EU) funded programmes in over 30 countries in Africa. He has provided expert services for several international organisations including agencies of the United Nations, African Union (AU), World Bank, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Mano River Union (MRU).

Early Political Career

Ibrahim was born and raised in a home with undoubtedly strong links with the All Peoples Congress; the first opposition in Africa to defeat a government in elections in 1967. During his early childhood, Ibrahim witnessed his father’s involvement in politics as the Secretary General of the National Youth League of the party. His dad rose through the ranks with multiple positions including the National Organising Secretary of the party from 2007 to 2009. With his father’s strong political ties in the APC, Ibrahim early on had access to some of the Party’s most influential leaders. Ibrahim’s tutelage at the feet of some of the doyens of the APC at the time, was instructive to his political education and access that was later to become a source of strength. His gentle persona, humility, peacebuilding and reconciliation credentials have always helped him rise above petty squabbles and conflicts to gain the respect and credibility of his comrades in the party. The military coup that removed the APC from power in 1992, and the consequences for its members, deepened the interest of Ibrahim to contribute to resuscitating the party at a time when it was not fashionable to be APC. With the declaration of a transition to democracy by the military in 1995, Ibrahim worked with the elders in rebuilding the APC. In 1996, he formed the ‘Rising Sun: Children of the APC’ and started recruiting his peers to support the APC. It was this group that he took to the university in 2000, when he was enrolled there. He served as the head of the student’s wing of the party from 2000 to 2004. That APC student group he founded has now transformed into the National Union of APC Students (NUAS); a very vibrant political institution, constitutionally recognised as an organ of the APC, with substantial delegate status at its National Delegates’ Conference. In 2002, he hosted the campaign of Ernest Bai Koroma at the university resulting in the party’s return to power between 2007 to 2018. In 2005, Ibrahim became part of the German Partnership with Africa Initiative of the then President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Prof. Horst Kohler. This initiative brought together young African and German youth from diverse backgrounds to mentor them for leadership roles in their respective countries. That initiative helped to further shape Ibrahim’s perspectives on politics in a global world, and how the young and older generations could work together to have a progressive world. Through this initiative, Ibrahim built strong international relations within the European Union EU, gained access to government officials and built partnerships. In 2018, Ibrahim started a campaign to serve as the Secretary General of the party. However, he suspended the campaign when he was asked by the party leadership to mediate a peace process between the party and the National Reformation Movement (NRM), which agitated for constitutionality and more democracy in the APC. On completing the process, he served in the Constitutional Review Committee which successfully inaugurated a democratic constitution which addressed several issues that had created angst and disquiet among members of the APC. During the 2023 elections, Ibrahim led the committee that developed the 2023 elections strategy and supported the development of the manifesto, working closely with the flag bearers, Dr. Samura Kamara and Hon. Chernor Ramadan Maju Bah.

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Education

Ibrahim Bangura is a distinguished alumnus of three prestigious Universities in Sierra Leone, Netherlands and Germany. He holds a PhD in Economics from the HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management, a Masters in International Development Study from the University of Amsterdam, a Masters in Gender Study and a Bachelor of Arts in History and Political Science degrees from Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone. Ibrahim Bangura is bilingual with a fluency in French and English in addition to other Sierra Leonean languages. He is a 2024/2025 Africa Oxford (Afox) Fellow at the Oxford School of International Development, Oxford University.

Early Years

Ibrahim Bangura was born on September 21 1980, in Freetown, Sierra Leone to Mr. Mohamed Lainkuray Bangura (widely known within All Peoples Congress circles as ML) and the late Madam Fatoumata Binta Balde (may her gentle soul rest in peace). Ibrahim Bangura represents a long history of interethnic and cultural diversity; a theme with a Fullah/Susu ancestry of his mother. Ibrahim Bangura was raised in the central district of Freetown (precisely Circular Road and Horton Street). He started school at the young age of four at the Cathedral Boys School. In 1990, Ibrahim Bangura took the National Selective Entrance Examination and gained entrance into the Government Rokel Secondary School, a school where he formed relationships with people that are still among his closest friends. He completed his high school education at the St Edward’s Secondary School in Freetown, a leading Catholic run school for mostly boys.

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