The founding dean of Strathmore Law School has been appointed Commonwealth director for peace and governance.
Dr Luis Franceschi is expected to take up the role of senior director later this month, adding a feather in a cap of a scholar who helped establish the law faculty at Strathmore University.
A statement from the Commonwealth secretariat in London said on Friday Franceschi’s expertise in convergence between constitutional law and public international law, could help steer the Commonwealth leadership.
“He has also been a legal advisor to several national and international government agencies, commissions and programmes, including international courts, the UN and World Bank,” the statement said.
Franceschi, who writes a weekly blog on the www.nation.co.ke, has received various awards before.
He is the recipient of the 2018 Utumishi Bora National Award in Research and Writing, the 2016 Australian Award and Visiting Fellowship at Griffith Law School (Brisbane) and was appointed as Visiting Fellow of Mansfield College, Oxford for the 2019 Michaelmas Term.
“Franceschi recently was engaged on the Courts of the Future initiative, where he brought together academia, practitioners, governments and judicial officers to transform the way the justice systems operate in Africa.”
Last year in December, he was awarded the 2019 C.B. Madan Award “for his impact on legal education in Kenya, where he created an enabling environment for the next generation of African law students to play a leading role in the creation of a just society.”
He will be highest ranked Kenyan at the secretariat, which is the bureaucracy of the 53 member states.
Last October, he convened a distinguished high panel at Oxford University to examine ways to implement court transformation in Commonwealth Africa.
Supreme Court Justice Isaac Lenaola, Director of Public Prosecutions Noordin Haji and High Commissioner to the UK Manoah Esipisu were among the participants.