Adaobi Egboka

Co-Chair

Adaobi Egboka is the Director of Africa Initiatives with the Vance Center’s Human Rights & Access to Justice Program. She directs the Vance Center’s programmatic activities in Africa, working on projects across all four practice areas with a focus on key rule of law and human rights issues, and leads organization-wide efforts to promote and strengthen pro bono practice in selected African countries through special initiatives and strategic partnerships.

Adaobi has more than 18 years of experience working on access to justice, rule of law, and good governance issues, and over 10 years of experience in NGO management, project coordination, fundraising, stakeholder management and team/capacity building. She began her professional career in 2007 as a legal officer at the Legal Defence and Assistance Project (LEDAP), a leading Nigerian human rights NGO, where she advanced to the position of Executive Programmes Director. Her work focused on innovative leadership and the effective application of international and human rights treaties and standards through capacity building, strategic litigation, and advocacy. She also focused on the full implementation of laws on justice sector reform and the prohibition of Gender-Based Violence, as well as initiating and coordinating pro bono partnerships, such as managing the duty solicitor scheme of LEDAP in partnership with the Law Society of England and Wales in 2009.

She managed the West African Focal Point of the Coalition for Effective African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights and served as an expert on electoral violence mitigation at The Electoral Institute, Abuja, from February 2015. Adaobi has also served as the Technical Assistant on Police Reform for the Rule of Law Advisory Team in the office of the Vice President, Federal Republic of Nigeria.