Adolf Mwesige

Minister of Local Government, Uganda / CLGF Board Member

Hon. Adolf Mwesige has over 17 years of legal experience. Hon. Mwesige joined the Parliament of Uganda in 1996 is currently the Minister of Local Government of the Republic of Uganda. Hon. Adolf Mwesige started his legal career in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1992-1996. He is an advocate of the High Court of Uganda.He served in the Government of the Republic of Uganda in the following capacities: Minister of State, Office of the Vice President (2003-04), Minister of State in the Attorney General’s Chambers in the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs (2004-06) and Cabinet Minister for General Duties in charge of Coordination and Monitoring in the Office of the Prime Minister.

Amina J. Mohammed

Special Advisor of the Secretary-General on Post-2015 Development Planning

Amina J. Mohammed of Nigeria is the Secretary-General’s Special Adviser on Post-2015 Development Planning.

Ms. Mohammed was previously Senior Special Assistant to the President of Nigeria on the Millennium Development Goals after serving three Presidents over a period of six years. From 2002-2005, Ms. Mohammed served as coordinator of the Task Force on Gender and Education for the United Nations Millennium Project.

Aromar Revi

Director, Indian Institute for Human Settlements

Aromar Revi is an international practitioner, consultant, researcher and educator with close to thirty years of inter-disciplinary experience in public policy and governance, the political economy of reform, development, technology, risk mitigation, sustainability and human settlements. He is the Director of the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS) India’s prospective independent national University for Research & Innovation addressing its challenges of urbanisation.

He is a member of the Leadership Council of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (UNSDSN) and co-chair of the Urban thematic group that is leading the process of framing an urban Sustainable Development Goal (SDG); Coordinating Lead Author of the IPCC Assessment Report 5 on Urban Areas; and a Fellow of the India China Institute at the New School University, New York.

He has been a senior advisor to various ministries of the Government of India, consulted with a wide range of UN, multilateral, bilateral development and private sector institutions & works on economic, environmental & social change at global, regional and urban scales.

Aromar has led over a hundred major research, consulting and implementation assignments in India and abroad; lectured and taught at close to three dozen of the world’s leading Universities and think tanks across five continents; has helped structure, design and review development investments in excess of $ 4 billion; worked on three of the world’s ten largest cities; across twenty-five of India’s twenty-eight states apart from multiple international projects in half a dozen countries.

Fatima Zahra Mansouri

Mayor of town of Marrakech

Fatima Zahra Mansouri is the current and first female Mayor of town of Marrakech in Morocco since 2009. She is the second woman as mayor in the history of Morocco. 

She studied law in France and started her career as a lawyer, founding a law firm that specializes in commercial and real estate transactions. She served as a municipal counselor for the Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM).

Femi Oke

Al Jazeera Anchor and broadcast journalist

Femi Oke is an Al Jazeera journalist, social media curator, speaker, moderator, media trainer, senior editor, television and radio correspondent.  She graduated from Birmingham University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature and Language. She joined the BBC as a radio reporter and producer. Before re-locating to the US, Femi worked for BBC television and radio, Sky Television and all the UK terrestrial television networks. 

Femi Oke joined CNN International in 1999. Based at the CNN Center in Atlanta she spent nine years anchoring and reporting.

Femi has assisted the United Nations World Meteorological Organization with training international broadcast meteorologists in Argentina and Mozambique.

She is currently based in Washington D.C. where she hosts the interactive current affairs programme "The Stream" for Al Jazeera English, and writes for the social media platform Upworthy.

Kadir Topbaş

Mayor of Metropolitan Istanbul / UCLG President

Kadir Topbaş was born in Artvin, Turkey in 1945. He graduated from Marmara University- Faculty of Theology in 1972, and Mimar Sinan University-Department of Architecture in 1974. Topbaş earned his PhD degree from Istanbul University-Department of Art History and Archeology, with a study on "Hidiv Mansion and its place in Bosphorus civilian architecture". Topbas worked as an architect for many years. 

Between 1994 and 1998, Kadir Topbaş worked as an adviser for Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, when Erdogan was the Mayor of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality. Topbas also served as the deputy director of Istanbul 1st Cultural Heritage Protection and Monuments Committee of the Ministry of Culture. 

Kadir Topbaş was elected as the Mayor of Beyoglu (a district of Istanbul) in 1999. During this period, he launched and successfully implemented an urban regeneration project called the "Güzel Beyoglu" ("Beautiful Beyoglu"). 

In March 2004 he run for Mayor of Istanbul and was elected with a vast majority of votes. He was re-elected in 2009 with a larger majority. 

He served as President of MEWA and Vice-President of UCLG between 2004 and 2007 and as Co-President of UCLG between 2007-2010. He was elected President of UCLG in Mexico in November 2010. He was nominated by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, as member of the High Level Panel to advise on the global development framework beyond 2015.

Paul Carrasco

Prefect of the Province of Azuay / President of the United Regions Organization-Global Forum of Regional Associations (ORU-FOGAR)

Paul Carrasco Carpio, is the Prefect of the Provincial Government of Azuay (Terms 2005-2009 and 2009-2014) in Ecuador, and President of the United Regions Organization-Global Forum of Regional Associations. His representation of intermediate governments as key actors for the development of territories has also occurred as Secretary General of the Latin American Organization of Intermediate Governments (OLAGI), organization that he presided from 2008 to 2011, he is member of the Expert Advisory Committee of the United Nations Center for Regional Development for Latin America and the Caribbean, he has been a panelist in several high-level international meetings in countries of America, Europe, Africa and Asia. He has also stressed his participation in the Task Force Group in alliance with UCLG and the ORU / FOGAR, in relation to the Development of Agenda Post -2015 at the UN and "the role of local and regional governments in the new Development Agenda Post-2015".

He is Chairman of the Executive Bureau for the Productive Promotion Corporation INVEC Productive Investment, President of the Azuay’s People's Parliament (2007-2012), Chairman of the Executive Board of the South Central Regional Electricity Enterprise (2005-2011), Member of the Commission for Territorial Organization for the Presidency of the Republic of Ecuador (2008), Institutional delegate of the National Consortium of Provincial Councils of Ecuador for CORPECUADOR and for the National Competitiveness Council (2006-2007), Chairman Executive Board of Hydroelectric Generation Company Paute / Hidropaute (2005-2007), President of the management Council “Waters of Paute’s Basin”(2005-2007), and Provincial Councilor of Azuay (2002-2004).

Born in 1971, he studied his Masters in Public Policy Management and he is an Agricultural Engineer.

Some of his publications are: Ecuador: The Road Towards a Radical Democracy (2013), A Five-Year Plan 2010-2014 (2010), The Development Model We Want for Azuay (2010); Azuay Proposes: Departments, the Proposal for Decentralization of the State. The Contribution of Azuay to the Constituent Assembly.  A Multidisciplinary technical Proposal (2007). A New Way of Making Government, Systematization of the Alternative Management of the Provincial Government (2005).