Cécile Ndjebet is one of the well-known leaders of CSO in Africa, an international women’s rights advocate and gender specialist. With 35 years of field experience, Cécile started her professional career as a Cameroonian Civil servant in 1986.

In 1997, she joined the civil society Organizations. She has been devoted to women’s rights issues and is being involved in the national, regional and international forestry, REDD+ and climate change processes for the past 15 years.

In 2009, to promote women’s direct and effective participation in natural resources management in Africa, Cécile, together with a group of African Women Rights advocates, founded the African Women’s Network for Community Management of Forests (REFACOF); one of the rare Sub-Saharan Africa women’s Platform of the forest sector, with 20 member countries from West and Central Africa. The mission of REFACOF is to promote women’s rights in Africa and advocate to shape policies and practices for gender equity in relation to land and forest tenure.

In 2012, Cécile was elected Climate Change Champion of the Central African Commission on Forests (COMIFAC). Cécile is a member of a good number of networks and professional societies at national, regional and global levels. In May 2021, she was selected as Advisory Board member of the UN Decade on Ecosystems restoration, 2020-2030.

Cécile is an Agronomist and Social Forester by profession. Gender specialist and Women Leadership trainer and adviser; she holds a M.Sc. degree in Social forestry from Wageningen Agricultural University in The Netherlands. She is a PhD Doctorate at the Central Africa Catholic University working on “Gender relations, access to land and socio-economic situation of women in the Cameroon rural coast”. 

During the XV World Forestry Congress held in May 2022 in Seoul, Korea, Cécile won the Wangari Maathaï Forest Champion Award for her energy and dedication over three decades in promoting women’s rights to land and forests.