Mariam Tendou Kamara

Mariam Tendou KAMARA is a social entrepreneur working towards social change and the empowerment of African women and girls. Her focus and work over the past 15 years has focused on building bridges and strengthening access to communications and new media and information technologies in the development sector, to the benefit of programs and policies across the West and Central African region and the Continent.

A founding member of WAFRICA (Women of Africa) a Guinea based international NGO focused on women’s rights, she currently heads BAANTOU, an influencer agency in public relations and digital communications, based in Dakar, Senegal, after having spent five years as regional communications specialist for the West and Central Africa region at the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (UN Women). As the regional communications portfolio manager for UN Women in West and Central Africa she developed the overall regional strategy for increased visibility of key programmes and projects and led the regional component of global campaigns with continental coverage. Previously, she held several roles and functions in the public and development sector as technical advisor in Communications and Strategic Partnerships and cabinet member of the Ministry of Youth Employment in Guinea. She also served as member of the Country Coordinating Mechanism for the Global Fund against AIDS Tuberculosis and Malaria for the international NGO sector
in Guinea.

Born to a Guinean father and a mother from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mariam Tendou is a US trained pharmacist who joined the African women’s movement in 1996 when she was working as a health care professional in California (USA). Ms Kamara holds a B.Sc/ B.Pharm degree from Northeastern University (Boston, USA) and her accreditations from the U.S National Board of Pharmacy Licensure Examination and the U.S State of California Board of Pharmacy as registered pharmacist.

As a strategist, Mariam Tendou has worked over the years with key international institutions, in the development, private and public sectors, as well as with national and regional
organizations to promote the African development agenda through strategic communications, including advocacy, partnership building and resource mobilization.