Sef Ashiagbor is a senior advisor with NDI’s Political Party Development team where she provides technical support on the design, implementation and evaluation of the Institute’s political party programs worldwide, and conducts research on issues affecting the development of political parties in nascent democracies. She contributed to the Institute’s Minimum Standards for the Democratic Functioning of Political Parties and completed a comparative study on intra-party candidate selection processes.
Sef’s career at NDI began in 1998 with a focus on Sub-Saharan Africa during which time she traveled extensively throughout the continent, contributing to programming in such countries as Benin, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Sierra Leone, Togo, Uganda and Zimbabwe. She managed a range of training and research programs and conducted programmatic assessments in such areas as political party development, extractive industries management, women’s political participation, election monitoring and legislative development. Also for the Institute, Sef oversaw a major study on party finance issues, authoring a report on efforts to promote reform in four African countries. In addition, she served in field positions in Ghana and Malawi. Previous to joining NDI, Sef worked in international humanitarian assistance, developing funding proposals and overseeing the procurement and shipment of relief materials to a variety of countries in crisis. She also worked in the West Africa department of the World Bank. Sef earned her Master’s degree in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a Bachelor’s degree in History from Selwyn College, Cambridge. She is fluent in French.
