Omotade “Tade” Akin Aina
Program Director, Higher Education in Africa

As Program Director, Higher Education in Africa, Omotade “Tade” Akin Aina develops and implements the Corporation’s strategy to accelerate economic and social development in Africa by strengthening teaching, research, scholarship and leadership. Working in South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Ghana and Nigeria, Carnegie Corporation is investing in initiatives including regional networks of scholars, fellowships to cultivate and harness individual skills in the sciences and humanities, while also building on the Corporation’s decade-long institutional support for universities and libraries.

Tade is an experienced foundation executive, whose decade-long tenure in the Ford Foundation’s Nairobi office, most recently as Regional Representative for East Africa, has been marked by innovation and visionary leadership.

Tade Aina studied sociology at the University of Lagos and the London School of Economics and obtained his doctorate from the University of Sussex. Aina was a professor at the University of Lagos, lecturing on urban poverty, governance and development. At Lagos, where he combined research with activism, Tade was one of the founders of the Nigerian Environmental Study Team and the Lagos Group for the Study of Human Settlements, publishing widely on these and related issues.

Tade joined Ford Foundation in 1998, coming from the Dakar-based Council for Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), where he was the Deputy Executive Secretary. In Ford’s Nairobi office, Tade developed a portfolio in Governance and Civil Society that has focused on the strengthening of the values and institutions of participatory democratic governance.