Cynthia Onyinye Mbamalu is a seasoned human and gender rights advocate with 17 years in development work focusing on promoting sustainable democracy, youth and women’s political inclusion, electoral integrity, and human rights. She is a lawyer by profession with an LLM in Comparative Constitutional Law from the Central European University (CEU). Cynthia Mbamalu is the co-founder of Yiaga Africa, where she serves as the Director of Programs leading on key initiatives advancing youth political participation, gender equality and electoral integrity in Nigeria and Africa. She was actively involved in the advocacy that led to the adoption of the Electoral Act 2022 in Nigeria.

Cynthia has participated in and led different election observation missions and study in Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Liberia and the United States of America. She leads on the #WatchingTheVote project, a data and tech-driven initiative for election integrity. Cynthia is a founding member of the Not Too Young to Run movement, which achieved the amendment of Nigeria’s Constitution to reduce the age for contesting elections. She is an experienced and certified community organiser currently managing the Annual Community Organizing Program for young people with over 500 beneficiaries in Nigeria and West Africa.

She provides mentorship to young people under different initiatives. With a passion for driving diverse conversations around democracy and development in Africa, she launched the Unamplified Podcast in 2023 as its Executive Producer and Host. She is an alumna of the; Harvard Kennedy School of Government Executive Program on Leadership, Organizing and Action, Central European University (CEU) on Constitution-Building in Africa, the University of South Africa (UNISA) on Management of Democratic Elections in Africa, the University of Cape Town on Leading in Public Life; Women, Influence Power Programme and the Cool Czechia: Young African Leaders’ Study Trip.