Chidi Koldsweat is the Founder/ CEO Donors for Africa Foundation. At this global development firm, she works actively with Governments, Funding Institutions, the Private Sector, Philanthropy Organizations, NGOs, and Social Impact Leaders to break the cycles of poverty in Africa.

Her core competence is providing business and social solutions in sustainability for social entrepreneurs. She has trained over 5000+ social impact organizations across Africa, raised over $30M in direct and indirect funding, and reached over 51,000 individual accounts, providing weekly knowledge to the development community. 

Chidi launched the first ever digital African Social Innovators Bootcamp in 2019 and since then has strengthened the capacity of over 120 civil society and entrepreneurs from 30 African countries helping them to jointly raise over $850,000 in funds. She recently closed a global partnership with Meta working with Donors for Africa to scale impact to communities in Anglophone West Africa.

She launched the premier African Women in Development Feature-a program focused on telling the stories of African women working solely in development who are transforming their communities and countries individually, globally, or as an organization.

As a development consultant, she provides strategies that influence the achievement of the 17 SDGs, working with organizations in tech, politics, business, gender equality, and more. She works with a pool of development experts to empower the next-generation leaders working to solve some of the toughest challenges in Africa and has facilitated several regional and global advocacy campaigns.

She was drafted into the African Youth Front on COVID-19, launched by The African Union (AU) Office of the Youth Envoy and the Africa Center for Disease Control & Prevention (Africa CDC). She participated in and coordinated regional virtual consultative sessions with young people from different parts of Africa, discussing the impact of COVID-19 and making recommendations to Africa Governments. She contributed to policy briefs presented to steering committees of the African task force and the AU paper on COVID-19, highlighting the impact on youth and the future of Africa we want.

Chidi has over 14 years of experience working in health, gender (women and girls in leadership, business, and politics), organizational management, and sustainability. She holds a Leadership Certificate in International Organizational Management from the University of Geneva and a Master’s in History & International Relations from the University of Lagos. She is currently pursuing a course in Public Policy Challenges of the 21st Century at the University of Virginia. 

Chidi has received several awards and recognition, including the Vital Voices 50 women Global Visionary leader presented by Estee-Lauder Emerging Leaders Fund (2023), 100 French-African Laureates 2021, 100 women influencing Africa, and Social Media for Social Good Awards 2020. She flew the Nigerian flag at the launch of the Arab-African Youth Platform in 2019 and pitched her organization’s work at the World Bank Youth Summit. 

In 2014, CEO Global gave Chidi an award as a Finalist, Africa’s most influential woman in management, business & public service (civil society category). In the same year, she was selected by the Chinese Embassy to participate in the three weeks cultural exchange program under The Chinese Association for International Understanding. In 2013, she became a Vital Voices Lead Fellow and was nominated amongst the 100 unseen women changing her world. In 2011, she was amongst Africa’s 25 most outstanding emerging women leaders under the Moremi Initiative for Leadership (MILEAD).

She continues to focus on creating long-term solutions that improve the lives of Africans at the grassroots through policy formulation, strategy, and implementation.