Team

Sahar is a development professional with 10 years of cumulative experience across sectors such as Education, Youth Unemployment, Entrepreneurship, Gender Based Violence, ASRH and Youth leadership and Development. She has experience in strengthening national statistics systems, HIV/AIDS data visualisation, assessment of orphan and vulnerable children policy, designing research and evaluations in the Gender Based Violence and Education and strategy development with requisite implementation plans. She provides the strategic oversight on all projects undertaken by RADAF and is experienced in fieldwork, quantitative and qualitative data analysis, data visualisation and data quality assurance validation.

Sahar is passionate about impactful results that transform the status quo using systems thinking. She has worked with UNAIDS, UNICEF, UNFPA and the British Council and provides training to various NGOs in monitoring and evaluation.

Sahar is currently completing her Doctorate of Education degree at the Centre of International Teacher Education housed at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology in Cape Town. This degree seeks to explore effective pedagogic practices through the experiences of newly qualified teachers in areas of Math and Language. She possesses a Masters Degree in Development Management from Bochum University where she explored the results of North-South mentoring on female entrepreneurs in Tunisia. She possesses a second Masters Degree (CUM LAUDE) in Public Administration where she conducted an implementation evaluation of the National Youth Development Agency’s entrepreneurship grant programme for survivalist businesses. Furthermore, she possesses an Honours Degree in Political Science from the University of Cape Town and a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics, Politics and Philosophy also obtained from the University of Cape Town.

Sophia has six years of experience researching WASH with a particular focus in conducting surveys, proposal development and coordination of volunteers based in the US, Singapore, Indonesia and Cambodia. Her strengths lie in interdisciplinary systems thinking, comparative policy analysis for infrastructure-related services, communicating technical issues to a general audience and building partnerships between different sectors. She completed her PhD in Urban Sanitation from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Her thesis topic was: Sustainability & equity of sanitation services in urban informal settlements. She has a Master of Science in Civil Engineering from the University of Cape Town, South Africa and a Bachelor of
Science in Engineering from Swarthmore College, PA, United States of America.

Fatima Collins, holds an MBA from the University of Cape Town and is an experienced development advisory consultant with a combined work experience of more than 20 years. Fatima has worked in four countries across sectors including, biomedical science, the NGO sector, corporate banking, renewable energy, corporate social investment and infrastructure. She has a strong understanding of cultural sensitivities and a passion for international development. Fatima’s expertise includes: Socioeconomic strategy development; Enterprise development strategy and implementation; Corporate Social Investment strategy and implementation; Strategic project conceptualisation and implementation; Project management and Stakeholder management.

Profile to be provided

Shabnam is our accounts manager. She has worked for 4 years with Mazars as a Senior Accounting Associate. She is a qualified Chartered Accountant. Shabnam graduated with a degree in accounting from the University of Cape Town, and an Honours degree in Tax.

My experience in RADAF, from the moment I walked in until my last day, was a gradual process of growth and a push outside my comfort zone. As an emerging researcher and analyst, I got exposed to more contextualised research that applied theoretically grounded ideas in real world settings. This introduced me to a level of rigour and in-depth deconstruction of the implementation nitty grittiness that underlie interventions targeted at community upliftment, something I had never been exposed to before.
Through this, I learnt how to hone the skills I already had, discovered weaknesses and gaps in my knowledge as well as gained new skills in the process. Moreover, I gained an appreciation of consistent work ethic, quality of output and delivering on multiple projects on time. This, coupled with the mentorship and support of Sahar, helped propel me further in my career.