Zaliha is a development practitioner with a decade of experience working with communities on access to education, gender, service delivery, and public accountability in Nigeria and other African countries, influencing public policy and behavioural change. In her previous position as head of Programmes at Connected Development (CODE), she managed donor-funded programmes from the Malala Fund, MacArthur Foundation, ActionAid, and the World Bank, among others. She also served as a Kashim Ibrahim Fellow and Special Assistant to the Governor of Kaduna State and worked on policy and government accountability. Prior to her current position at ACCORD, Zaliha served as a student intern under the Programmes department, where she worked as an assistant on the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency and the CSO-UN Peacebuilding Dialogue projects.
She holds a Master’s degree in Peace and Conflict from Uppsala University, Sweden, and BSc and MSc degrees in Public Administration, and she is a certified Project Manager from the Project Management Institute.
She is a fellow of the Rotary Peace Fellowship, the Kashim Ibrahim Fellowship, the Ban Ki-Moon Centre, and the Population Reference Bureau (PRB), and a member of the Open Government Partnership.
Her interests include peace, education, governance, gender, and climate action.
