Biography

Tonny Muzira is a social entrepreneur, human rights advocate, and policy analyst with a keen interest in social policy. He is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the African-Canadian Centre for Innovation, STEM and Artificial Intelligence (ACHIST), Canada’s first equity-driven innovation access hub dedicated to advancing the full participation of African-Canadian youth in STEM and AI. At ACHIST, Tonny leads the organisation’s vision, strategy, programs, and partnerships, grounded in the belief that every African-Canadian young person deserves a pathway into Canada’s innovation economy — one that is culturally affirming, accessible, and designed with their community, not just for it.

Tonny brings over 10 years of progressive leadership in community innovation, organizational policy, youth empowerment, and equity advocacy across Canada, Uganda, and East Africa. As a former Country Director for the International Youth Alliance for Family Planning and a national advocacy leader at the Foundation for Male Engagement Uganda, he built and scaled programs that reached tens of thousands of young people across five regions, developing expertise in human-centered design, evidence-based program development, and driving systems-level change from the ground up.

In Canada, Tonny co-founded the Centre for Black Development Options Canada (CBDOC), where he led advocacy that contributed to a federal emergency housing intervention during Toronto’s 2023 refugee housing crisis and presented policy recommendations to the federal Standing Committee on Budgets. He is a graduate of Maytree Policy School’s prestigious Policy Fellows program and is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Public Administration in Justice, Law, and Public Policy at York University. In 2026, he was nominated for the Daniel G. Hill Human Rights Award for sustained equity-driven leadership in Ontario.

As a Black African newcomer and refugee who has personally navigated the barriers that ACHIST exists to dismantle, Tonny’s leadership is powered by lived experience as much as professional expertise. He knows firsthand what it means to seek belonging in spaces not designed for you, and he co-founded ACHIST to ensure that the next generation of African-Canadian innovators, scientists, and leaders never has to.

Tonny is a passionate champion of anti-Black racism frameworks in STEM, inclusive innovation policy, and the transformative potential of African-Canadian youth. Under his leadership, ACHIST is building the bridge between underserved communities and Canada’s innovation future, one young person at a time.