BY PHUMELELE MKHONTA
MBABANE– Courtesy visit!
Eswatini Prime Minister His Excellency Cleopas Sipho Dlamini has today, received a courtesy visit from the Director of the UNAIDS Regional Support Team for Eastern and Southern Africa, Anne Githuku-Shongwe.
According to a press statement released by the Government of Eswatini, The Director is currently in the country on a mission to engage stakeholders, including Government, and familiarise herself with Eswatini’s HIV response efforts and measures that may be needed for continued effective national response.
Also present at the meeting was UN Resident Coordinator H.E George Wachira, UNAIDS Country Director Rose Craigue, NERCHA Director Khanya Mabuza, Secretary to Cabinet Victor Nxumalo and Principal Secretary Bertram Stewart, among others.
Anne Githuku-Shongwe is the Director of the UNAIDS Regional Support Team for Eastern and Southern Africa. She has 20 years of experience as a senior international development professional, including with the United Nations Development Programme, across Africa and in management consulting in the United States of America.
Her last post was as the Representative for UN Women’s South Africa multicountry office, which is responsible for women’s empowerment and gender equality in Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia and South Africa.
She is an award-winning social entrepreneur and founder of AROES, a digital and gamification learning enterprise, and is a thought leader on the future of learning.
Githuku-Shongwe and AFROES have received multiple awards, including the prestigious Schwab Foundation/World Economic Forum Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2013 award and a national award, the Order of the Grand Warrior, from the President of Kenya.
She is an author and contributor to several books, including The write to speak: a collection of stories by African women leaders, Kenya@50 and Turning a crisis into an opportunity: the HIV response in Lesotho. She is also a board member and grand juror of the World Summit Awards for the United Nations Information Society and a former Global Ambassador of the Vital Voices leadership programme.
She has a Masters’s degree in international development from the American University, a certificate in social innovation from the University Of Cape Town Graduate School Of Business, a certificate in the art of large-scale systems change for social entrepreneurship from Harvard University and a management certificate from Jones International University.
