Jude Feranmi
Nigeria
Occupational Information
Job Title: Convener at Raising New Voices Initiative, CEO Republicraft Consultancy
Professional History
Jude Feranmi is the convener at Raising New Voices Initiative. For the past seven years, he has worked as a civil society leader, bringing Nigeria’s youth together to advocate for policy and legislation reforms that ensure the participation of young people in Nigeria's civic and political life. New Voices is a movement of more than 2,000 young Nigerian leaders that is focused on the campaign for inclusion of marginalised groups in Nigeria in the civic and political decisions of the country. He says a key responsibility of his is resource mobilisation for the implementation of campaigns and managing the relationships and partnerships with stakeholders that are instrumental to achieving our objectives.
Jude also set up a sister organisation to New Voices called the Republicraft Consultancy and he is its CEO. The consultancy leverages policy expertise and advocacy experience, providing policy analysis for organisations working at the edge of development and policy advocacy in the country. A former Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of Nigeria recruited Jude to be Executive Director of To Build a Nation (TBAN), a civil society organization that promotes democracy in Nigeria.
As part of the initiative's advocacy for electoral reforms to ensure the inclusion of young people and increased participation in the electoral process, Jude led more than 25 young leaders in each state to aggregate more than 4,000 Nigerians to write to the National Assembly on the urgent need for electoral reforms. As the legislative process kicked off, some elected members of parliament planned to derail youth representation reforms. With COVID-19 preventing organising physically the initiative developed a civic-tech approach that aggregated people's voices on the issue and applied pressure on the National Assembly to drop the changes. The National Assembly went on to pass the Electoral Amendment Bill into law with more than 90% of the recommendations made.
As the leader of the movement at New Voices, its one year leadership fellowship for young aspiring political leaders have also been really rewarding especially in the instance of seeing young people in the cohort take bold steps of running for office and getting involved in the political process.
Along with the work he did with the initiative, he served in the Office of the Chief of Staff to the President of Nigeria, working on the Nigerian Startup Bill as the Engagement Lead and liaising working with directors and representatives of various ministries and departments. He has also served as an independent consultant to the Federal Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy and as Technology Policy Engagement Advisor to Tech Hive Advisory. Other roles he has held include Advocacy Consultant to Digital Governance for Africa and also the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre. He was also a co-founder of Founding Networks Africa and a range of other political and governance related organisations and initiatives.
During the Ford Foundation funded Project Pakati at AFLI, he served as a Changemaker, one of the leadership positions for the project.
Qualifications
B.A Philosophy Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife
MSc, double masters in Public Policy and Human Development, United Nations University, UNU-MERIT Maastricht
Certificate in Technology Innovation for Sustainable Development from Policy for Science, Technology and Innovation from Swiss Institute of Technology, Geneva
Certificate in Policy for Science, Technology and Innovation from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Programs
2020 Archbishop Desmond Tutu Leadership Fellow
