For the past five years, IMANI has been ranked as one of the top 10 most influential think tanks in Africa, according to a report from the policy group.
In a year-in-review report outlining their launched initiatives and advocacy efforts, IMANI reported that the research center has “carved a niche in Ghana’s policy environment for putting out objective, independent analysis and critique on many issues, using tried and tested techniques that apply across different disciplines.”
“IMANI has grown, within a short time of its existence, to become a stalwart for encouraging reality-based solutions to a complex array of economic and social problems in and beyond Ghana,” said the World Bank’s County Director Ishac Diwan. “IMANI is known to highlight those critical areas of economic and political policy that find resonance across the artificial borders of Africa.”
Among IMANI’s many accomplishments in 2018 was a two-hour call paid by H.E. Fumio Shimizu, Ambassador Extraordinary & Plenipotentiary of Japan to the Africa Union.
And in late October, IMANI’s founding president, Franklin Cudjoe, met exclusively with Ghana’s High Commissioner to South Africa in Pretoria George Ayisi-Boateng.
“IMANI demonstrates the vital role that civil society organizations can play in making government leaders more accountable to citizens,” said Atlas Network CEO Brad Lips. “Its IMANIFesto Campaign finally forces politicians to reconcile their campaign rhetoric with the real-world trade-offs that face policymakers in office.”
The think tank has also seen a sharp increase in its digital reach. Its 2016 IMANIFesto campaign, a framework assessing political party manifestos, saw a reach of more than 2 million Facebook users and one million Twitter followers.
According to the report, IMANIFesto provided the country digestible information surrounding the 2016 presidential elections and its plans to spearhead policy and advocacy topics in 2019 as candidates begin to emerge for the 2020 elections.
About IMANI (from website)
IMANI Center for Policy & Education is a Think Tank of considerable local and international repute based in Ghana. Founded on the 9th of March 2004, IMANI has over 50 media allies in Africa. Like other public policy think tanks, we produce high-quality, relevant research. We distinguish ourselves when it comes to media impact, and especially when it comes to our capacity to reach out to ordinary citizens through a wide variety of mass-circulation newspapers, the internet, and appearances on popular television and radio shows. We can say that “pound for pound,” we have by far the highest media profile of any think tank in West Africa.