<P> The Universities' Mission to Central Africa (c. 1857 - 1965) was a missionary society established by members of the Anglican Church within the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, and Dublin . It was firmly in the Anglo - Catholic tradition of the Church, and the first to devolve authority to a bishop in the field rather than to a home committee . Founded in response to a plea by David Livingstone, the society established the mission stations that grew to be the bishoprics of Zanzibar and Nyasaland (later Malawi), and pioneered the training of black African priests . </P> <P> The society's foundation was inspired by lectures that Livingstone gave on his return from Africa in 1857 . Though named to reflect its university origins, from the outset it welcomed contributions from wellwishers unaffiliated to those institutions . The society had two major goals: to establish a mission presence in Central Africa, and to actively oppose the slave trade . </P> <P> To advance these goals, it sought to send a mission led by a bishop into Central Africa; Charles Mackenzie was duly consecrated in 1860 and led an expedition in 1861 up the Zambezi into the Shire Highlands . This first expedition was more or less disastrous . The area chosen as a base, near Lake Nyasa (Lake Malawi), proved highly malarial; Bishop Mackenzie died there of the disease on 31 January 1862, along with many local people and three others among the tiny missionary party . Early conversion efforts from this base yielded little result, and supplies ran out or were destroyed during a period of famine . The mission then withdrew from the area, abandoning the graves of the missionaries who had died there, and though it established a new presence in Zanzibar many years passed before it returned to Malawi . Bishop Tozer, Mackenzie's successor, deemed the mission's early years "a miserable failure". </P> <P> Mackenzie's successor, Bishop Tozer, relocated the society's base to Zanzibar in 1864 . Here they enjoyed much greater success, receiving a cordial welcome from the island's Arab and African residents, and establishing a number of operations, including a mission school, St Andrew's at Kiungani . The mission's early work in Zanzibar substantially involved caring for and schooling children rescued from slavery, and establishing a settlement - Mbweni, founded 1871 - for these released slaves to live in . On Christmas Day, 1873, the foundation stone of Christ Church was laid in the grounds of the former slave market, closed only six months earlier . It was completed in time for Christmas 1880 and a mass celebrated there . Miss Annie Allen came to the Zanzibar Mission in 1878 and later came to consider it home . Here she created a Zenana Mission that served many women and children . </P>

Who was the first leader of the universities mission to central africa