Farai Samhungu, Regional Director - IPS Africa

Farai Samhungu has worked for 14 years in the area of development communications and media. She is currently the Regional Director for IPS Africa, with management responsibilities for the news service and related media and communication projects in Africa.

Prior to joining IPS, she was the Media Advocacy Programme Coordinator with the United Nations Population Fund in Zimbabwe. She also spent nine years with an international technology development organisation (Intermediate Technology Development Group) with offices in the UK, Asia, Latin America, and Africa. During her time at ITDG, she held several positions, Communications Manager, Head of Policy and Communications, and Head of Marketing.

This work involved establishing and managing a complex communications programme that required writing, editing, supervision and publishing of numerous audio-visual and print products. Conceptualisation of these outputs required a cross-cutting knowledge of issues in a number of fields including gender, technology, social embedding of development initiatives and the contextualisation of information into the work of a wide range of stakeholders.

These included rural and urban poor communities, other NGOs, private sector organisations as well as government departments and technical agencies, targeting their policies and practices.

She has wide-ranging consultancy expertise which has involved reviewing and evaluating the communications and media work on behalf of clients such as DFID, HIVOS, Family Health International and others.