Executive Director

Ibrahim-Tanko Amidu

Ibrahim-Tanko Amidu is the organization’s principal technical advisor, ensuring that STAR-Ghana is utilizing, developing and applying best practices and providing inspired thought leadership within the organization. Ibrahim-Tanko has been involved in development management, civil society strengthening and social development for over 20 years.

He has extensive experiences that span from facilitating strategic planning processes, design and implementation of monitoring, evaluation and learning systems, institutional strengthening of state and non-state actors at all levels of governance and programme management. He has led in the development and implementation of social development and voice and accountability programmes and projects at all levels of governance, ranging from small integrated rural development projects to the multi-donor pooled national governance fund, STAR-Ghana. Ibrahim-Tanko is a seasoned development professional and has worked extensively with the Government of Ghana, local and international Civil Society Organizations and Bilateral Aid Agencies in Ghana. He was the Team Leader of the first phase of the STAR-Ghana programme, a multi-donor pooled fund.

He was at various times the Ghana Country Director of VSO Ghana, the Northern Ghana Programmes Coordinator of CARE International in Ghana and Project Manager for a number of CIDA and DANIDA funded projects. In recognition of his work and achievements, Ibrahim-Tanko was awarded the ‘Global Partnerships for Social Accountability (GPSA) Award for Leadership in Social Accountability, Africa Region’ by the World Bank Group in May 2015.

Our Work

The sustainability of civil society and civil society organisations has become a critical issue in the light of changing global, social, political and economic dynamics. STAR-Ghana uses a two-pronged approach to support civil society actions.

Through grants and technical support, we are working with and through partner organisations (grantees) to enable citizens to engage with the state and with government to ensure accountable, transparent and responsive governance.

We provide support to grantees to enhance their operational competence, efficiency and capabilities to enable them to more effectively achieve their goals and represent their constituents. The programme will build on the results and learning from grant partner capacity building work undertaken in STAR-Ghana’s first phase to develop and implement a holistic and integrated civil society strengthening strategy.

Evidence from STAR phase 1 and other programmes has shown that giving grants alone does not lead to transformational change. Grants are only one of the ways STAR-Ghana aims to bring about change.

Non-Grant Support

Strengthening civil society’s capacity to plan, manage, implement, and account for results and sustain organisations is critical to achieving sustainable development objectives.

Our non-grants strategy is organised around STAR-Ghana’s overall strategic approach, to act as convener, catalyst and coordinator of civil society action towards systemic change and a facilitator of learning to enable a more reflective and adaptive approach to programming. STAR-Ghana:

• Provides evidence, tools and innovative ways to support civil society to mobilise resources for its own actions.
• Facilitates alliances, aided by the credibility of the STAR-Ghana brand: alliances are central to our collaborative approach to stimulating citizen action. The programme supports formal and informal coalitions of change actors.
• Provides integrated capacity building support to partners: our capacity building strategy combines support in strengthening partners’ technical abilities with strengthening their ability to act politically.
• Convenes dialogue on critical and sensitive national issues: STAR-Ghana has developed a strong convening power, which helps bring together influential individuals in a way that previous donor-funded civil society initiatives have been unable to do.