Emmanuel Kivanyuma Waiswa

Emmanuel Kivanyuma Waiswa, Co-Founder and Senior Director of Civil Collective is a seasoned Development Professional with over 12 years of experience in community development and youth leadership for health equity. Five years ago, he transitioned from a full-time Country Management role at Spark Microgrants and entered uncharted territory. An uncertainty at that time was how to restructure local development and shift towards a model that respects and dignifies the aspirations of local people. This led to the birth of the Civil Collective, a grassroots grant-making organization focused on building local capacity to drive local development through grantmaking and evidence gathering for movement building.

Emmanuel is passionate about transforming the aid environment by researching and developing tools and resources for grassroots institutions to lead their development planning and implementation for sustainable outcomes. As a community power fellow, Emmanuel looks forward to engaging different networks to continue refining and strengthening community engagement tools and resources. He is currently researching how to develop a methodology for aggregating community contributions.

Emmanuel holds a Master’s in Gender and Development and is currently focused on exploring a self-designed PhD in African Philanthropic Studies. He is a former SHIFT the Power fellow and an alumni of the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI). He has been recognized as an influential leader by the New Vision among the 40 under 40 influential men of 2017. He is a farmer and in his free time, manages his farm in Eastern Uganda where he practices mixed organic farming. He is passionate about dairy and coffee agriculture and dreams of owning a coffee roastery and making cheese.