Christabel Dadzie

Senior Social Protection Specialist, World Bank

Christabel E. Dadzie is an international development specialist with extensive experience working on economic development across Africa, in Latin America and South Asia, leading projects in education, gender, agriculture, trade, social protection and youth employment with various international development organisations including United Nations entities and for the USAID. Currently, she works with the World Bank as a Senior Social Protection Specialist, leading the Ghana and The Gambia portfolios to promote social inclusion, youth employment, and ending extreme poverty. Additionally, she has supported the Social Protection and Jobs projects in Liberia in Sierra Leone. For the former, she co-led the development and implementation of an adolescent girls’ program to revive businesses of young women whose businesses were shut down as a result of the Ebola Virus Disease crisis. Upon returning to Ghana from the US in 2010, she identified the need to promote Brain Gain among young Ghanaian professionals by supporting the returnee transition. She therefore founded Ahaspora Professionals Network (www.ahaspora.com), an organisation which supports Ghanaian professionals who have lived or studied abroad and return home to make a difference. Starting with 12 people in 2011, Ahaspora currently has over 3000 members, connecting home and abroad both professionally and socially. Ahaspora has a flagship mentoring program for high school students across Ghana as its give-back initiative which has reached over 1000 students to date. Christabel is a Board Member of Emerging Public Leaders organisation and the Databank Foundation, on the Management team and a mentor for the Moremi young African women leadership initiative, and a member of the Women’s Advisory Board of The College of Wooster in Ohio, where she earned a Bachelors’ Degree in International Relations. She also has a Masters’ Degree in International Affairs from Columbia University.