Kathleen NDONGMO

Kathleen is a leading African strategist and avid creative communications professional focused on brands, business and digital media. Her extensive professional experience spans over many years of developing creative and effective strategies for various brands, projects and organisations.

She has almost 20 years of global experience across a variety of industries in top management consulting, creating value in both the public and private sectors with specific work across the financial, telecom, government, transport, sustainable development, and non-profit industries.

Her previous experience includes: driving transformation programs for Fortune 500 clients, designing and implementing business process optimization for a leading Nigerian bank, building innovative communication strategies for a variety of clients including a media company, government and multinationals as well as project managing tech-driven ventures.

A notable voice for digital rights in Africa, she was one of the leading voices against the Cameroonian Internet shutdown of 2017 and actively contributed to the #BringBackOurInternet campaign. She was the country update speaker for Cameroon at the Paradigm Initiative’s Internet Freedom Forum in 2016 and 2017, and has written several regional digital rights reports including: the Cameroon update for the Digital Rights in Africa Report (DRIFF), the 2019 country report included in the State of Internet Freedom in Africa Report (1999-2019) for the Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) and the 2020 Cameroon Digital Landscape Report for the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, Brighton, UK. Kathleen also contributed to the birth of the Open Internet for Democracy Advocacy Playbook, which serves as a companion piece to the Democratic Principles for an Open Internet, and includes ideas and recommendations for advocates of digital freedoms, focusing on tailored approaches to advocacy that apply across diverse local contexts.

Kathleen is passionate about Africa’s potential and is a strong advocate for positioning local businesses for impact. With a wide range of interests, she is an Open Internet for Democracy fellow, an alumnus of the prestigious IVLP programme, has been named one of Cameroon’s 50 change agents and was the recipient of the Cameroon Career Women awards in 2016 amongst other accolades. She is a member of the Netrights Africa Coalition, a pan-African coalition for digital rights in Africa and the Africa Digital Rights Network (ADRN) which brings together activists, analysts and researchers from seven African countries.

She is an alumna of the University of Buea, Cameroon and the Nottingham Trent University, UK.