Zaynab Mohammed Motha

Zaynab Mohammed Motha is a is a nonresident fellow at the Global South Policy Hub. She is a humanitarian and development practitioner with over 12 years of experience working across East Africa. She currently serves as Program Lead and Head of Office for Adeso Somalia, where she leads programme development and implementation and works closely with communities, local authorities, civil society organizations and donors.

Zaynab has worked extensively on community-led approaches to humanitarian and development programming, including Adeso’s Survivor and Community-Led Response (sclr) approach, known as Saxansaxo in Somalia. Her work focuses on supporting communities to define their own priorities, make decisions about resources and build on the capacities, relationships and resources they already have.

Through her work, Zaynab has become increasingly interested in the relationship between local leadership, financing and power in the aid system. She is particularly interested in what it takes to move beyond participation towards approaches where communities and local organizations have greater control over decisions and resources. Her current work also explores ways of combining community-led approaches with locally generated resources and alternative forms of financing to strengthen self-reliance and reduce dependence on traditional aid.

Zaynab has experience across programme management, operations, partnerships, resource mobilization, proposal development and donor engagement. She has worked with international organizations, local actors and government authorities in complex humanitarian and development settings.

She holds a Master’s degree in International Relations and a Bachelor of Laws and works in English, Somali and Kiswahili. Her work is grounded in a practical interest in how the aid system can better recognize and support the leadership, knowledge and resourcefulness that already exist within communities.