At the helm of the Africa Judicial Independence Fund is a distinguished Advisory Board comprising esteemed members:
Professor Willy Mutunga (Chair)
The Honourable Willy Mutunga was Kenya’s chief justice and president of the Supreme Court from 2011 to 2016. He served as secretary general of the Commonwealth special envoy to the Maldives in the second half of 2016. He was a distinguished scholar-in-residence at Fordham Law’s Leitner Center for International Law and Justice School from October 2016 to May 2017. In October-December 2019, he was one of two foreign experts who advised the Constitution Review Commission of the Gambia on its draft Constitution. Since October 2021, Justice Mutunga has been an adjunct professor in public law at Kabarak University School of Law.
Justice Mutunga, who studied law at Dar es Salaam University and Osgoode Hall Law School at York University in Toronto, Canada, played a pivotal role in the Constitution-making processes in Kenya in the 1970s and the early 1990s. He worked on implementing Kenya’s progressive 2010 Constitution as head of the judiciary and president of the apex court in the country. In his writings and judgments, he advocated the development of indigenous, robust, patriotic, decolonized, de-imperialized, pro-people, democratic, and progressive jurisprudence that is not insular and does not pay unthinking deference to other jurisdictions, regardless of how prominent they may be. He has also advocated progressive jurisprudence for Africa and the global South as part of a significant contribution to the struggle for a just, peaceful, and equitable world.
During his tenure as chief justice, Justice Mutunga sought to lay permanent and indestructible foundations for a transformed judiciary. Under the blueprint of the Kenyan Judiciary Transformation Framework 2012-2016, he achieved impressive progress in bringing the justice system closer to the ordinary people. He also worked on the linkage between formal and traditional justice systems as decreed by the Constitution. He not only humanised the Kenyan judicial system but also reduced its case backlogs significantly. He aimed to use technology as an enabler of justice, as well as to bring about equitable and transparent systems of recruitment, promotions, and training. He supported and strengthened the Judicial Training Institute as a nucleus for juristic training and an institution of higher learning.
Justice Mutunga is well known for his fight against corruption in the judiciary and in Kenya as a whole. He spearheaded independent and principled dialogue, consultation, and collaboration between the three arms of government, the devolved governments, civil and corporate society, the media, and the public. Under his watch, the notion of the judiciary as an institutional political actor began to take root.
His vision of the planet is one that is just, free, peaceful, non-militaristic, non-sexist, non-racist, non-ethnic, gender just, non-eugenist, humane, ecologically safe, equitable, prosperous, and socialist.
Professor Augustin Loada
Professor Augustin Loada is an accomplished individual with a diverse background. He graduated from institutions in Burkina Faso and France and has taught Public Law and Political Science at the University in Burkina Faso since 1995. Furthermore, he has practised law since 2016. Professor Loada was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Boston University in the USA and became a member of the American Political Science Association (APSA) in 2000.
He served as the founder and the first Executive Director (2000-2014) of the Center for Democratic Governance (CGD), a research center in Burkina Faso that focuses on governance and democratization. He also established and headed the Institute for Governance and Development (IGD) in Burkina Faso, which, in partnership with APSA, organized a workshop on “Religion and Politics in Comparative Perspective” in 2013 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. In November 2014, Prof. Loada was appointed Minister of Civil Service, Labour, and Social Protection in the Transitional Government of Burkina Faso.
Since 2016, he has travelled frequently to New Caledonia, a French territory in the Pacific region, where he participated in the UN Group of Electoral Experts and later led the Group from 2018 to 2023. In Burkina Faso, Professor Loada continues to teach at the university and manages his law firm.
Ayo Obe
Ayo Obe (née Ogunsola) is a legal practitioner and partner, with Olasupo Shonibare, in the Lagos-based law firm, Ogunsola Shonibare LP. She is a Trustee of Senegal’s Gorée Institute and of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. In Nigeria, she is on the board of the Z.O. Dibiaezue Memorial Libraries and is an active member of the #BringBackOurGirls campaign.
Obe was President of the Civil Liberties Organisation (Nigeria’s first indigenous human rights organisation) from 1995-2003, and has also been chair of the Transition Monitoring Group (an election-monitoring/democracy-building coalition of independent NGOs), the Steering Committee of the World Movement for Democracy and Nigerian Civil Society’s panel on Police Reform. She represented Nigerian Human Rights NGOs on the Police Service Commission from 2001-2006 and was a Trustee of the CLEEN Foundation from 2001-2015. From 2006-2009 she headed the Elections Program of the National Democratic Institute’s Nigeria office and also served on the Steering Committee of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum’s State Peer Review Mechanism. She has been a panellist at the Women’s Forum in Deauville, France, the Oslo Forum, the Beijing Forum and the Chinua Achebe Colloquium in Providence R.I. among others.
Obe has written weekly columns on current affairs for Sunday Punch, Next and The Guardian and delivered several lectures and papers on a range of human rights and democracy-related subjects. She presented “You and the Constitution” and “On Point” for the Nigerian Television Authority, and most recently, IDEAs Radio, a programme about integrity, ethics and accountability in democracy, on Nigeria Info 97/3FM.
Professor Henry Kwasi Prempeh
Kwasi Prempeh, a distinguished legal scholar and governance expert, currently serves as the Executive Director of the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana). He has been involved with the center since its inception, initially as a board member and later as its first Director of Legal Policy and Governance and co-editor of its quarterly publication, Democracy Watch, from 2001 to 2003.
Prior to his role at CDD-Ghana, Kwasi Prempeh taught at Seton Hall University School of Law in New Jersey, USA, from 2003 to 2015. He achieved tenure as a full professor in 2008. Additionally, he served as a visiting professor at GIMPA Law School from 2010 to 2011 and has been co-teaching the “Constitution-Building in Africa” course at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, since 2014.
In 2013-2014, Kwasi Prempeh acted as a constitutional adviser to the UN Special Envoy to Yemen. He was also a Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy in 2011. Widely recognized for his expertise in democratization, governance, and constitutionalism in Ghana and Africa, he has authored numerous publications, including articles in esteemed journals such as the Journal of Democracy and the International Journal of Constitutional Law.
Kwasi Prempeh practiced law in Washington, D.C. He graduated from Yale Law School in 1993 and also holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Baylor University in Texas, USA, and a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Ghana. He currently serves as a member of the Ghana Law Reform Commission.
Kaajal Ramjathan-Keogh
Kaajal Ramjathan-Keogh is the Director of the Africa Programme at the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ). ICJ is an international non-governmental organization founded in 1952 with a mandate of defending human rights and the rule of law worldwide. One of the core pillars of ICJ’s work is to promote the independence of judges and lawyers. Kaajal is a South African lawyer based in Johannesburg and has worked in the human rights sector for more than 20 years. She was the Executive Director of the Southern Africa Litigation Centre from 2015- 2020. At SALC she led many strategic litigation cases focussing on various human rights issues and in particular judicial independence, rule of law, international criminal justice, freedom of expression and association. Prior to that she was the Programme Manager of the Refugee and Migrant Rights Programme at Lawyers for Human Rights from 2002- 2014. She has significant experience and expertise in the fields of asylum and refugee protection, migration, citizenship, and statelessness. She has also worked on international criminal justice, SOGIE SC rights, women’s access to justice and freedom of expression. Kaajal has provided probono support on the boards of several non-profit organisations for many years.
These individuals bring a wealth of expertise, experience, and unwavering commitment to the cause, guiding the Fund in its mission to empower judiciaries and legal practitioners.