Africa Development Conference 2025

Prof Luis Gabriel Franceschi, LLB, LL.M, LL.D is the Assistant Secretary General of the Commonwealth of Nations, an intergovernmental organisation of 56 countries, 2.7 billion people, one third of the world. He coordinates the Political, Democracy, Electoral, Public Sector Governance, Peace, Rule of Law, Judicial Transformation, Human Rights, and Countering Violence and Extremism work in the 56 member countries. He is also the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting – CHOGM Conference Secretary, and, together with the Head of the Host Country Task Force, oversees the organisation and negotiations throughout the meeting.

Prof Franceschi is a Kenyan Advocate and he was the founding Dean of Strathmore University Law School, in Nairobi. As a thinker, educator and writer, he loves positive and disruptive innovation.

He was made a Chevalier by the President of Gabon with the Ordre National du Mérite for his outstanding achievements. He was also the recipient of the 2019 legal excellence CB Madan Award and the 2018 Utumishi Bora National Award. In 2019, he was a visiting scholar at the University of Oxford and U.C. Berkeley Law School in California. His area of expertise focuses on innovation in legal education, judicial transformation, peace negotiations, and comparative constitutional law. He has written widely on the convergence between Constitutional law and Public International Law “the constitutional regulation of the foreign affairs power”. He has been a legal advisor to several national and international government agencies, commissions and programmes, including international and regional courts, the United Nations and the World Bank. He sits on several boards and he has also conducted executive leadership courses for CEOs in several countries. He has been a Governing Council Delegate and the Legal Advisor to the President of the Governing Council of the United Nations Environment Programme, where he co-drafted the UN Nairobi Declaration.

He has published widely on constitutional law, political and international issues. He was also a weekly columnist with the Daily Nation Newspaper (Kenya) for almost 10 years.

Prof Franceschi likes cycling, running and mountain climbing and has reached Point Lenana, Mt Kenya (5000 Meters ASL) 5 times, Uhuru Peak on Kilimanjaro (5895 Meters ASL) and the Rwenzori Mountains circuit (Uganda-Congo). He is a Kenyan citizen and currently resides in London, where the Commonwealth Secretariat has its headquarters.