Profile of Mr. Anthony Okara

Anthony Okara is a lawyer, diplomat and international civil servant. He has been involved in multilateral engagements and public sector reforms for almost 2 decades in Kenya, East Africa and on the African continent at large. He is the Deputy Chief of Staff, Bureau of the Deputy Chairperson at the African Union Commission.

As Head of Cabinet at the Deputy Chairperson’s office, he has been at the centre of the basic capacity building and extensive institutional reforms at the African Union. He was deeply involved in the development and implementation of the new AU Staff Regulations and Rules as well as the new Financial Rules and Regulations. He promoted the introduction of results based management, programming and budgeting, waste reduction and a radical improvement of the ICT infrastructure at the AU Commission.

Anthony now continues to build strong systems and methods. He is helping guide the introduction of world-class accounting and reporting systems, new administrative policies towards better governance at the AU. He is one of the key drivers of the World Bank supported initiative at the AU on Institution and Capacity Building Programme (ICBP). In his free time, he engages and links various actors in the global system to encourage and promote investments on the continent.

He was one of a team of four that drafted the first East African Community Treaty (1997), served as rapporteur for the preparation of the comprehensive review of the Constitution of Kenya, served in the team that implemented the Public Procurement reforms in Kenya (1998-2001), advised on the establishment of the Productivity Centre of Kenya.

In previous years, as the key aide to the Attorney General and later Minister for Justice in Kenya, he was actively involved in the Legal Sector Reforms and the Governance, Justice, Law and Order Sector Reform where he drew his first critical lessons in public sector reforms on stakeholder participation and political sensitivities.

Anthony holds a Bachelor of Laws degree and is currently writing his thesis to complete a Master of Arts degree in International Studies at the University of Nairobi. In 2007, he spent one year at the National Defence College in Nairobi and completed a course on statecraft and national security.

Anthony is married with two children. He is passionate about sports and football in particular.