KEHINDE AINA

Kehinde Aina is a Sir Alexander Darnley Award nominee and Managing Partner at Aina Blankson LP, one of Africa’s leading international law firms. A renowned international arbitrator and mediator, he founded the Lagos Multi-Door Courthouse (Africa’s first court-connected ADR center) and later initiated the establishment of the Supreme Court Mediation Centre and the Court of Appeal Mediation Centre in Nigeria. In 2010, the World Bank appointed him as a regional consultant covering ten countries, and in 2015 he became a consultant to the United Nations.

His extensive transactional experience includes representing over fifty of eighty-nine Nigerian banks during the banking sector consolidation, leading the merger of nine commercial banks, and advising on major transactions such as the Nova Capital $2 billion capital raise, the R500 million golf estate acquisition in South Africa, the $350 million Atlantic LNG project, the Chad-Cameroon Petroleum Development Pipeline mediation, the £20 billion Shell Petroleum oil spillage negotiations, and numerous arbitrations under ICC, LCIA, and Singapore Arbitration Rules. He is also the author of two books on mediation and commercial arbitration.