A Land Economist, Development Policy Analyst and Gender Specialist by profession, with over 24 years of experience in land and natural resource governance, land policy, women’s land rights and development practice in general. Nana Ama Yirrah is the Founder and Executive Director COLANDEF. At COLANDEF, she is responsible among others, for providing overall leadership and direction for the organization and its programs. She oversees the development of the overall strategic direction for COLANDEF, manages the engagement with partners and leads the COLANDEF national policy advocacy agenda.
She has managed many portfolios of multi-stakeholder processes at both the national and international levels.
Over the past years of her work, Nana Ama has gained in-depth knowledge and expertise in policy advocacy, stakeholder management, facilitating awareness raising activities, design of development interventions and training programmes, securing customary land rights, gender in sustainable development, women’s land rights, land and natural resources governance, among others. She also provided technical advice to different organisations and institutions in Ghana, Africa and globally, working on land governance and land rights. She has been a consistent advocate for gender sensitive land governance system for Ghana.
She also has extensive experience in Organizational Strengthening, Monitoring and Evaluation, Research and Report Writing and loves to provide coaching to organizations and individual practitioners in these areas.
In addition to her work at COLANDEF, Nana Ama also serves as a member of the Advisory Group for other projects that are led by similar organizations.
She has a great sense of commitment, excellence and dedication to her work. She is the mother of three young adults and enjoys spending time with friends and family.