Mukelani Dimba is a senior policy specialist with a focus on transparency and anti-corruption. He has a wealth of expertise in design, development and delivery of training projects on transparency and accountability policy areas. He also has vast technical expertise in the thematic areas of information rights law, transparency, accountability, open contracting, multi-stakeholder initiatives, strategic planning and monitoring & evaluation. Mukelani not only has technical expertise in transparency and accountability law and policy areas, but also has an academic background in strategic training and development, making him a highly effective trainer in the area of legal standards on information rights (freedom of information, freedom of expression and privacy).
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 a 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 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 currently is the former global co-chair of the Open Government Partnership and currently serves as its chairman of the board. 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 and former chairperson of the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution.