Alan Wallis is a program officer in the foundation’s Southern Africa office focused on Natural Resources and Climate Change. Alan oversees the Southern Africa office’s grant making supporting equitable and inclusive transitions. This work focuses on transition and extraction impacted communities in the region, recognising that the success of transitions and climate interventions cannot be measured by emissions reductions alone. 

Alan is a human rights lawyer with over a decade of experience working at the intersection of human rights, access to justice, and development in Africa. Prior to joining Ford, Alan was the senior strategy advisor at the Africa Climate Foundation, the continent’s first strategic regranter supporting interventions at the nexus of climate change and development. He has worked as a human rights litigator and researcher, philanthropy advisor and grant maker and program implementer. 

Alan has also held roles with the Judiciary of Seychelles, the Open Society Foundations, Southern Africa Litigation Centre, and the Constitutional Court of South Africa. Alan also serves on the Council of the Independent Philanthropy Association of South Africa.

Alan holds an LLB from the University of Cape Town, a post-graduate diploma in Environmental Law, and a LLM in international human rights from the University of Michigan, where he was University of Michigan Grotius Scholar and Constitutional Court Trust of South Africa Ismail Mohammed Human Rights Fellow.