Mr. Mukelani Dimba

Mukelani Dimba is the Executive for Education and Communication at the Information Regulator. He is a policy specialist with a focus on transparency and anti-corruption, and has technical expertise in the thematic areas of information rights law, transparency, accountability, opens contracting, multi-stakeholder initiatives, strategic planning and monitoring & evaluation. He has a wealth of expertise in the design, development and delivery of training projects on transparency and accountability policy areas.

As the erstwhile executive director of the Open Democracy Advice Centre, a law centre that specialised in freedom of information laws and protection of whistleblowers, where he worked for 18 years, Mukelani Dimba has vast experience in leading public policy training and advocacy on the rights-based approach to transparency and accountability as essential elements of enhancing good governance. This work has entailed training public representatives, government officials and civil society groups regionally and globally on the enactment of enabling laws to improve transparency and accountability and development of regional and global standards for incorporating transparency and accountability as essential tools for good governance.  This work has been conducted in countries such as South Africa, Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Botswana, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, Egypt, Maldives and Brazil.

Mukelani has worked at high levels as part of teams coordinating the development of global and regional standards on information rights issues such as; the African Union’s Model Law on Access to Information, Judicial Colloquium on the Right to Information, the Global Principles on National Security & Access to Information, the Open Government Partnership and the African Platform on Access to Information. As a former faculty member of the International School for Transparency (IST), originally a joint project of the University of Cape Town (South Africa) and the Södertörn University (Sweden) he was involved in designing and delivering leadership training programmes on transparency and open governance policy issues for senior-level government officials (ministers & permanent secretaries) from Uganda, South Africa, Bangladesh and Jamaica.

Mukelani is the former global co-chair of the Open Government Partnership and currently serves as its chairman of the board of directors. He also serves as the deputy chairperson of the board of directors of the Open Contracting Partnership. He is the former chairperson of the Africa Freedom of Information Centre.