After eight years at the helm of the African Leadership Institute, 2010 Tutu Fellow Jackie Chimhanzi PhD, has accepted an exciting position as Regional Director, Southern Africa, with the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI). At TBI, she will be responsible for the Institute’s portfolio in Zambia, Malawi, Angola and Mozambique.

Although she will be stepping down from her role as Chief Executive of AFLI, in mid-November 2024, she will continue as a member of AFLI's Board and remain involved in AFLI’s development and activities. To ensure continuity whilst searching for a successor to Jackie, the Board has put into place an interim arrangement. 2009 Tutu Fellow Lai Yahaya - who is also an active member of the AFLI Board - will serve as Interim CEO for a period of six months.

In the time Jackie has been a cornerstone of the Institute, she has become the highly respected face and heart of the Institute, successfully building the image of the Institute amongst influential international networks, raising the substantial funds we need to keep the important work of the Institute going, attending to the detail of the daily running of the ship, and being the lynch-pin of the Tutu Fellows network, which is so dear to her heart. She has worked tirelessly and selflessly in steering the Institute through its transition from a Founder-led entity to a successful stable organisation. We have a great deal to thank her for and wish her well in this next step of her career.

Lai brings a long history of involvement with AFLI as a 2009 Fellow and as a Board member. He is a lawyer and political economist who has spent the last two decades working as a public policy advisor to governments, development finance institutions, and major international corporates on political economy dynamics, market entry strategy, infrastructure project finance, and public-private partnerships in Sub-Saharan Africa. He was most recently Special Advisor to the Chief of Staff to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari and Senior Policy Advisor to Raila Odinga in his role as African Union High Representative for Infrastructure Development in Africa.

He received his BA(Hons) and MA from Balliol College, Oxford University, MSc in Business Economics and qualified both as an attorney with the Wall Street law firm of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy and as a Solicitor of the Supreme Court of England and Wales. He started his career at the United Nations Development Programme in New York, working as an assistant and speechwriter to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

He is a Yale World Fellow and advises and sits on the board of several non-profit entities.