Professor Attiya Waris — Detailed Bio
About
Attiya Waris is Kenya’s second full female law professor and the first full law professor from a religious, ethnic and racial minority in the country since independence. She is also the only known Professor of Fiscal law on the African continent. Her original scholarly contribution to this field has been the development and strengthening of the linkages between finance and development through taxation, debt and illicit financial flows and the raising of living standards. She is the 3rd Law Professor to undertake an inaugural lecture.
Career Highlights
Professor Waris has in the past held the position of Director Research for the University as well as acting Deputy Principal College of Humanities and Social Science as the first female Professor to hold both posts separately and simultaneously. She holds several portfolios currently and: is currently serving as the UN independent expert on foreign debt and international financial obligations under implications for human rights globally, a member of the Global Solidarity Levies Taskforce, the Chair of the Supervisory Board of the Capabuild Foundation based in the Netherlands, a Commissioner on the Lancet Commission on Racism, Structural Discrimination, and Global Health, a member of the Editorial board of the Yearbook on Economic Determinants at the WHO, a member of the Working Group on Debt at the Madrid Club as well as the Managing Editor of the Journal on Financing for Development housed at the University of Nairobi.
Most recently Professor Waris was quoted in March 2025 in his keynote at the UNCTAD Debt Conference by Christian Duarte, Minister of Finance, Honduras; in May 2024 by President Higgins of Ireland in his keynote speech in Dublin, Ireland, in the Constitutional Court of Kenya in October 2023 during the debate on housing tax. In addition her work was cited by the Minister of Foreign Affairs Frederick Mitchell of the Bahamas in his intervention during the recently concluded G77 meeting in Kampala in January 2024. She has been a founding member of several organisations including the African Tax Researcher’s Network based in South Africa, the Tax Justice Network Africa, the Capabuild Foundation in Amsterdam and the Committee of Fiscal studies, University of Nairobi and most recently AFRODAD-East and Horn of Africa and the House of Fiscal Wisdom (a new thinktank based in in Nairobi focussing on the International Fiscal Architecture).
Attiya’s vision for the future
I think the most important challenge we face is the clear and growing problem of poverty across the world. No matter what anybody says, people are desperately poor and economies are struggling. I see people sleeping on the streets in London and across the UK, and I still see people sleeping on the streets in my home country, Kenya. I believe the financial system we live in has the potential to resolve these problems—if we pay close attention to every single element of it and make sure it truly does what it is supposed to do.
