Michael Alandu leads CARE’s work in West and Central Africa and Madagascar, overseeing strategy and country office performance across the region. He brings more than 20 years of development and humanitarian leadership in the region, with expertise in governance and public policy and a steady focus on impact for women and girls.
Before taking up this role, Michael was Country Director for CARE Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, where he managed more than $70 million in investments in agriculture, health, and education and made CARE a key convener of government, business, and civil society. As Chief of Party in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ghana, he managed nearly $40 million in programs. His leadership in Ghana’s agricultural sector produced an agricultural governance index that the Government of Ghana adopted and scaled up nationally. As CARE’s Senior Director and Global Lead for Partnerships, he led the organization’s shift to locally led partnership models, helping to more than $130 million to local partners across more than 40 country offices. Before joining CARE, he worked with the World Bank in Washington, DC.
Michael has represented CARE before members of the U.S. Congress and Senate, government ministers, and senior business leaders, and he serves on the Board of Directors of the International Cocoa Initiative. He holds master’s degrees in political science from the University of Waterloo and in International Relations from the International University of Japan, and a first-class BA in Public Administration from the University of Cape Coast in Ghana. He is fluent in English and French and speaks several Ghanaian languages.
Today, Michael is focused on building mission-driven country offices that deliver on time, on budget, to quality, and in full compliance; adapting CARE’s programming to the private sector through a commercial initiative in coastal countries in the region; building a regional humanitarian response capability for the Sahel; and leading CARE’s use of AI in development and humanitarian response, all underpinned by stronger storytelling about CARE’s impact.