LDP Partnership Programme

Judy Thongori and Company Advocates

Judy Thongori’s firm is high profile and well respected in Kenya. Judy has fifteen years experience as a lawyer, most recently specialising in implementing programmes to enhance access to justice for poor women in Kenya.  

Judy has front line experience of providing legal services to poor women. She has acted in public interest litigation aimed at increasing their access to justice. A key aspect of her work has been to empower women and other marginalised sections of society through training and media campaigns. She trains to build capacity for self-representation through the justice systems, and on proactive advocacy for responsive laws and policies. She has worked with the judiciary and with Parliament on programmes to increase justice for women, and is currently a Visiting Justice for a women's prison in Nairobi.

Adept Systems Management Consultants

Adept Systems has been established since 1994 and provides a full range of management consultancy services in the areas of human resources management, business development, information management and financial systems. They have carried out specialised assignments for government departments, parastatals, private sector companies and a number of donor agencies within East and Southern Africa. They have a team of highly qualified and experienced consultants and a large number of professional associates, both local and foreign, who can be called upon at short notice.

Adept work to optimise the quality and efficiency of both human and management systems that are available in your organisation. They work alongside your staff to identify the strengths and weaknesses of current management systems and suggest improvements, and assess their capacity. By studying the organisation’s structure, workflow and volumes, they are able to assess the adequacy of staffing levels and recommend changes as appropriate.

Adept’s areas of expertise include: IT strategy development, systems development and implementation, training, systems acquisition, implementation and audit, organisation development, business management reviews including restructuring, staff development, performance management, pay policy development and management.

Adept’s technical expertise is complimented by strengths that include:

• a strong focus on delivering results.
• a proven ability to work from your point of view and harness the extensive knowledge and skills that exist in your organisation. In this manner, we are able to deliver home-grown solutions and build the capacity of in-house personnel to independently undertake similar assignments in the future.
• a keen understanding of the market place, acquired through employment and the execution of consultancy assignments.

Development Options

In Uganda our affiliate is Development Options, whose chief executive, Angela Katama – a financial economist, is a specialist in private sector development. Until 2002 she was Executive Director of the Uganda Private Sector Foundation – an umbrella organisation for over forty business associations and large corporations. She carried out high-level advocacy activities on behalf of PSF’s membership, she was responsible for the management of major World Bank and European Union funded private sector development projects. Since leaving the PSF Angela has carried out consultancies in Uganda and more widely in East Africa developing and implementing private sector projects. This experience in the management of large private sector development projects stands her in good stead to design sectoral programmes and provide advice on policy formulation.

The firm Development Options has established itself as a strong service provider and is regularly out-sourced to design and evaluate programmes by a range of development agencies. The firm has gathered together a human resource base, which combines sound academic credentials with extensive local knowledge and experience. Their staff bring to their work an innovative and energetic professionalism and come from a range of development and business oriented disciplines.

Development Options services are driven by the philosophy that Uganda’s development challenges demand the capacity to prioritise and analyse development issues, as a basis for formulating practical, cost- effective solutions. Emphasis is also placed on presenting persuasive evidence to support policy recommendations. Assignments carried out in the recent past have included private sector development, strategic planning, programme design social research, and business growth strategies.

MCM Associates

Mavis MacCarthy is Chief Executive Officer of MCM Associates, a development consultancy firm based in Accra, Ghana. She has over ten years of professional experience working with the private sector in Ghana. Her goal is to contribute significantly to the development and growth of the private sector in sub-Saharan Africa.

Mavis was recently part of the team that developed a medium-term strategy for private sector development in Ghana, and is currently working with the Government of Ghana on implementation. She has extensive experience in Corporate Governance and has worked closely with several SMEs in Ghana, to strengthen their governance and organizational structure and systems.

From 1997 to 2001 she worked with the Enterprise Support Services for Africa of the International Finance Corporation, on sustainability and growth of local enterprises. Her strengths are in project management and evaluation, strategic and business planning, capacity building and training. She holds an MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario, Canada, and a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, from the University of Ghana.