Amara is a civic technologies expert and a public policy analyst with a passion for evidence-driven policy development and effective governance.
He is director of the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Foundation’s Public Policy Initiative, with over 10 years’ experience in leading, developing and contributing to public policy on climate advocacy, credible elections, energy access, governance and accountability in Africa.
He has key expertise in national and sub-national stakeholder engagement and linking multi-level policy and programmatic objectives within a variety of institutional and governance contexts. Amara has specialist expertise on Nigeria and in designing and deploying digital technology for good governance and national development. His climate advocacy experience has focused on community engagement and influencing government action, while election management and youth mobilisation work has focused on strengthening institutions and voter education.
His achievements include contributing to the development of the 1-Gov.net platform; a shared services platform for the Nigerian government which was awarded the 2013 United Nations Public Service Award for 1st Place in Africa in promoting whole-of-government approaches in the Information Age. His project leadership work on climate advocacy resulted in two award-winning documentaries for the Yar’Adua Foundation titled "Nowhere to Run" and "Swallow".
Amara has extensive experience working with international institutions and NGOs including the United Nations, the European Union, UK Department for International Development (DFID), US Agency for International Development (USAID), the MacArthur Foundation and SOS SAHEL.