Mr. Syed Abu Ahmad Akif
Mr. Syed Abu Ahmad Akif belongs to the Pakistan Administrative Service who appeared for the highly competitive civil service examination in 1982 and secured the first position in Pakistan. He served as the Cabinet Secretary and Federal Secretary at the Ministry of Climate Change Pakistan. He worked in the provincial governments of Sindh and Balochistan, prior to his posting as Director-General of Pakistan’s Hajj mission in Saudi Arabia from 2010–2015. He obtained two master’s degrees from the University of Karachi. In 1998, Syed Akif received a fully funded degree fellowship at the East West Center Hawai’i (University of Hawaii) that led to a master’s degree in public administration. Again becoming a full-time student in 2009, he completed the master’s program in defense and strategic studies from the National Defense University, Islamabad.
He is an accomplished writer and author of 10 books and 100 plus published articles. On March 23, 2019, Akif was bestowed with an honour that is rare for civil servants: the Sitara-i-Imtiaz.