Mawusi Dumenu is the Programme Officer, for elections in our Sierra Leone Programme. Mawusi joined International IDEA in August 2023.

Mawusi leads the management and delivery of electoral processes for the Sierra Leone country programme at International IDEA. He has several years of research and programmatic experiences that transcends elections, democratic governance, peacebuilding and Preventing/Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE). 

Prior to joining International IDEA, Mawusi was a Senior Programs Officer and Team Lead for Elections at the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), an independent and non-partisan research think tank based in Ghana, where he contributed significantly by providing the needed management, operational, coordination and technical support for the successful implementation of programmes and projects. In the 2016 and 2020 presidential and parliamentary elections, Mawusi provided crucial oversight support for the recruitment, training, deployment and supervision of over 8,000 and 4,000 election observers respectively. He has since 2016 supported the Head of Secretariat with the management of the Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO) based in Ghana. Between 2017 and 2023, Mawusi served as the Coordinator of the West African Election Observers Network (WAEON), and successfully coordinated the revival and continuous resourcing of this regional initiative that aims at strengthening and supporting Citizen Election Observation Groups (CEOGs) in the region.

At CDD-Ghana, Mawusi was part of the pioneering team that established the Security Sector Governance programme in 2018. He contributed tremendously in growing this portfolio with projects, programmes, research and advocacy efforts on peacebuilding, Countering/Preventing Violent Extremism (C/PVE), and border security. In June 2023, Mawusi participated in the US State Department’s flagship fellowship program International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) in the United States, and was part of the cohort “Countering Violent Extremism – Community Strategies”. In addition, he led and managed commissioned research studies for GIZ, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the World Bank and the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD). Since 2017, Mawusi led a research consultancy at the Center that provided data on an annual basis for the African Electoral Index for inclusion in the Mo Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG).

Mawusi holds an MPhil in Development Studies and a BA in Economics and Sociology both from the University of Cape Coast in Ghana. In 2019 he participated in a research-oriented fellowship jointly organized by Afrobarometer and the Institute for Democracy Citizenship and Public Policy in Africa (IDCPPA) at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.