Christine Kalume - Information and communication
Overview
Christine Kalume has over 20 years’ experience in international development with a focus on information and communication, particularly in the fields of HIV/AIDS and malaria. She has expertise in strategy development, project conceptualisation and resource mobilisation.
Background and relevant experience
Christine served as Health Partners International's (HPI) Managing Director between 2006 and 2008 and is now a consultant and adviser with the organisation. Before joining HPI, Christine was Senior Business Development Manager for Options Consultancy Services, leading on the development of business partnerships and tenders in the health sector. Christine was instrumental in the development of Options’ regional platform in South Asia, which resulted in a significant contract for health systems support to the government of West Bengal.
Prior to this, Christine worked for the international health and disability non-governmental organisation (NGO) Healthlink Worldwide for seven years. As a senior manager, she developed Healthlink’s capacity to manage and deliver consultancies and training, communication products and services. Successes include the design of an innovative project with the Malaria Knowledge Programme at the Liverpool School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine to strengthen the communication of learning from the programme. She was also editor of the international edition of Healthlink’s HIV newsletter for health workers, AIDSAction, which had a worldwide readership of more than two million.
From 1997 to 1998 Christine was a science writer for the International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA), Syria, covering West Asia and North Africa. She was responsible for articles for scientific journals, the Center’s publications and the staff newsletter.
Between 1991 and 1995, Christine worked for the African Medical Research Foundation (AMREF), Kenya. She fulfilled a number of roles, including project leader for the Health Learning Materials Project, Malaria Unit; consultant to the Nomadic Health Unit; team leader for the Process Documentation, Health Behaviour and Education Department (HBED); and was assistant to the Health Education Network (HEN), where she was responsible for providing anthropological advice to HBED projects and producing HEN publications. She also served on the editorial board of the Kenya National AIDS Control Committee’s newsletter.
Christine has also consulted in Kenya and Ethiopia and worked on a number of desk-based assignments in the UK. She is currently Communication for Development Specialist on the UK Department for International Development (DFID) project: From Information to Accountability – Strengthening Citizen Voice and Accountability for Better Service Delivery. She also designed and managed the inception phase of the documentation and learning component of the Support to International Partnership Against AIDS in Africa (SIPAA) programme for DFID and ActionAid.