Kah Walla: Political Leader, Activist and Entrepreneur from Cameroon

Building People Power: Lessons from Grassroots Citizen Movements in Cameroon and the U.S.

Political Leader, Activist and Entrepreneur from Cameroon.

Grassroots citizen movements in Cameroon are empowering and engaging women and youth in political reforms. Kah Walla connects movements to actions in the USA—in particular the current gun violence protests across the country.

Kah Walla is a Cameroonian political leader who in 2011 challenged the political status quo when she announced her candidacy for the presidential elections and became the first woman ever to run for the presidency of the nation.

Kah Walla started her advocacy for political change in 1992 following the reintroduction of multipartism in Cameroon. She sided with the main opposition party at the time and soon became one of its key advisers and trainers. She provoked a mini-revolution in working methods and brought in a systematic and strategic approach to politics. In 2007, she was elected into the municipal council of Douala 1, the economic capital of Cameroon. In 2008 she led a dynamic campaign against the constitutional amendment which removed term limits for the presidential terms office.

Aptly featured this year in the book “The Next Africa”, Kah symbolizes the new generation of African political leadership which firmly believes in the continent’s ability to achieve global standards of development and demands that this be done in respect of principles of good governance, equity and democracy. Her leadership style has often been recognized at international level. She received the Vital Voices Global Leadership Vanguard Award (2015), DVF Award (2014), was named one of 150 women who shake the world by Newsweek and Daily Beast (2011) and one of Africa’s 100 most influential leaders by New African Magazine (2011).

Professionally, Kah Walla is an entrepreneur who founded STRATEGIES!, a 20 year old international consulting firm, offering services in leadership and strategy to multinational firms and development organizations on 5 continents. She was recognized as one of 5 African woman entrepreneurs fighting for an enabling business environment on the continent by the World Bank in 2009.

As a community activist, she founded Cameroon Ô’Bosso, a citizens’ movement for change, through which she was recognized in 2009 by the Clinton Global Initiative for her capacity building project in entrepreneurship and policy dialogue carried out with over 500 market women in Douala.

Kah’s leadership can be summarized in her own words “I believe in Africa and our innate ability to succeed as a people.”


http://kahwalla.com/

Sponsored by the Dickey Center and made possible by the Class of 1957 Great Issues Innovations Fund