Dr Alexander Solanke

Dr Alexander Solanke, is a Mathematician, a public sector change management specialist, and a Malawian politician. Born in Nigeria in August 1952, he attended King’s College Lagos Nigeria, from January 1965 to September 1970 before moving on to Imperial College, University of London and thereafter to Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University, UK where he studied Mathematics, Statistics and Operations Research respectively between 1971 and 76 for his graduate and post-graduate and doctoral degrees. He is an Associate of the Royal College of Science, UK and a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications.

He was commissioned into the Nigerian Navy in 1976 and rose to become the Head of the Department of Mathematics and Professor at the Nigerian Defence Academy before emigrating in 1985 to become a citizen of Malawi where he has since worked in top management positions in the City of Blantyre Council and the Blantyre Water Board respectively. He also lectured at The Polytechnic, a constituent college of the University of Malawi before joining the Malawi Public Service Reforms and Functional Reviews program as the Project Coordinator and lead consultant between 1997 and 2004. He was appointed as the Chief Executive of the Public Sector Change Management Agency in the Office of the President and Cabinet of Malawi in 2001, a position he held until 2004.

Dr Solanke was Chairman of the Fisheries Association of Malawi between 2005 and 2009 and has been Chairman of Enviro Trust, a Non-Governmental Organization since to 2021. He was also a member of the Board of Directors of CDI (Malawi}.

He is a founder and the first Secretary-General of the United Transformation Party (UTP) of Malawi; which has since evolved to become UTM Party, one of the three biggest political parties in Malawi. He was Director of Research (2019-2023) of People's Party (PP), Director of Political Affairs and Presidential Advisor of PP (2023-2024) and UTM Presidential Advisor (2024-2025).