Amie Joof-Cole

Member, Judging Panel

Amie Joof-Cole is a journalist, gender and women’s rights activist, a communication and election expert. She is the Executive Director of FAMEDEV- the Inter-African Network for Women, Media, Gender and Development. Amie Joof-Cole worked for several years at Radio Gambia, now Gambia Radio and Television Services (GRTS), where she rose through the ranks from News Reader, Producer, Head of Rural Broadcasting and Adult Education to the position of Acting Manager of Radio.

She has won numerous awards for Radio Gambia from the Union of Radio and Television Networks in Africa now the African Union of Broadcasting (AUB), the World Health Organisation(WHO) and Japan International Awards.

Amie is a founder member of the women's rights organization GAMCOTRAP, which campaigns against traditional practices that affect women and girls such as female genital mutilation, and was its president from 1991 to 1999. She was also the first female President of the Gambia Family Planning Association(GFPA) and served as Chairperson of the National Women’s Council of The Gambia from 1994 to 1999, In 1999 she was appointed Secretary General of the West African Women’s Association under ECOWAS.

In 2001, she served as Director of the African Women's Media Center (AWMC) in Dakar (Senegal) before she became executive director of FAMEDEV in 2003 . Amie Joof-Cole has more than 30 years work experience in media, communication and gender.

She has also served as Trainer and Regional Coordinator for the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) in West and Central Africa, one of the largest research and advocacy initiatives on gender representation in and through the media.

Amie has worked extensively as an Election Observer and expert in Gender, Peace and Conflict Prevention for both Long and Short Term Election Observation Missions of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African Union (AU). Amie is a member of the Gambia Press Union and Chairs the Media Ethics Panel of the Media Council of The Gambia. She also served on the Constitutional Review Commission of The Gambia from 2018 to 2020.

She is a Board member of the Panos Institute for West Africa, the Institute for Management and Enterprise Development (IMED) based in Ghana , the Coalition on Media and Education For Development- Africa Forum (CAFOR) and Kairaba Senior Secondary School. She is a member of the Solidarity for African Women’s Rights (SOAWR) Coalition, a regional network working towards the promotion and protection of women’s human rights in Africa, as well as their participation in governance, peace and security processes and structures.

She is a Senior SYNERGOS Fellow and Consulting Associate, a Global Network that is comprised of distinguished international civil society leaders committed to collaborative efforts that address the underlying causes of poverty and inequity.