Shaping Africa’s Future: The 2025 AIG Fellow

We are pleased to announce that Mrs Funke Femi Adepoju, Director-General of ASCON, has been awarded the 2025/2026 AIG Visiting Fellowship. Her project aims to transform Nigeria’s public service training institutions into powerful drivers of reform and innovation. During her six months at Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, she will deepen her expertise and explore new ways to strengthen public sector transformation. Her Fellowship project, “From Capacity Building to Reform Delivery,” seeks to reimagine Nigeria’s public service training institutions as national engines for governance innovation and sustainable reform. 

The Aig-Imoukhuede Foundation is driven by a clear mission to transform public service delivery across Africa, believing that a high-performing and values-driven public sector is critical to the continent’s socio-economic progress. Through programmes like the AIG Fellowship, the Foundation supports talented leaders who hold key positions in public service to accelerate reform, build institutional capacity, and champion innovation. 

This year’s 2025/2026 AIG Visiting Fellowship has been awarded to Mrs Funke Femi Adepoju, Director-General of the Administrative Staff College of Nigeria (ASCON). During her six-month fellowship at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, Mrs Adepoju will engage with leading scholars and explore new approaches to public sector transformation. This opportunity will build on her impressive leadership at ASCON, where she has driven initiatives including large-scale digital training programmes, comprehensive curriculum redesign, and strategic partnerships. These efforts have strengthened training institutions as catalysts for reform aligned with Nigeria’s Civil Service transformation agenda. 

Mrs Adepoju’s work is grounded in a vision of elevating Nigeria’s public sector through human capital development, technological integration, and governance reforms. Her leadership has already instigated nationwide skills-gap surveys, curriculum overhauls incorporating climate governance and digital interventions, and renewed collaborations with federal and state governments. By joining a distinguished network of past AIG Fellows, she is poised to deepen her impact and contribute to building a stronger, more effective public sector in Nigeria and across Africa. 

Click here to read her full profile.