Makmid is a Sierra Leonean human rights leader, democracy advocate, and development communications practitioner, with almost 20 years’ experience working with national and international development, human rights, and grantmaking organisations in Africa and the United Kingdom. He is Regional Director for Africa and the Middle East at the International Fund for Public Interest Media. He is also the Founder of Reform Initiatives (LBG), an organisation dedicated to working to advance reparatory justice issues in Africa and beyond. Until recently, he was the founding Director of the Africa Transitional Justice Legacy Fund (ATJLF), based in Accra, Ghana. His focus has been on transitional justice and reparations for historical crimes. He has led various collaborative efforts around reparatory justice issues and TJ mechanisms meant to repair the wrongs of the past in selected African countries.
Prior to the IFPIM and ATJLF, Makmid worked at the International Secretariat of Amnesty International in London as (Ag.) Deputy Director of Global Issues and Head of the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESCR) Team; served as interim Country Director for Amnesty International Nigeria and as a West Africa Researcher. As West Africa researcher, Makmid led Amnesty’s research on serious human rights violations and mass atrocities committed in the Boko Haram conflict in north-eastern Nigeria and co-authored several reports on crimes against humanity and war crimes. As interim Country Director for Amnesty in Nigeria, Makmid helped found the Human Rights Clinic at the University of Lagos and the Legal Intervention Network in Nigeria. He has also held posts with Oxfam GB in Sierra Leone and the UK, and with Concern Worldwide in Sierra Leone.
Makmid started his career as a journalist in Sierra Leone and has written several articles and reports on human rights and social justice issues for high-profile African and European publications and institutions. He is a Rotarian and an Obama Foundation Leader for Africa.
He holds an MSc with distinction in Media, Communications and Development from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a BA (Hons) with distinction from Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone.
Communal compassion gives me hope. The rising level of people’s movements and the growing energy of previously maligned groups in society gives me hope. The realisation that the fight against inequality is shared, it’s structural and it requires collective energy and ideas to change it, gives me hope.Makmid Kamara