Mvemba Phezo Dizolele is a senior fellow and the director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Prior to CSIS, he was the Africa senior adviser at the International Republican Institute. Previously, he served as the course coordinator for central and southern Africa at the U.S. Foreign Service Institute. He was also a Peter J. Duignan distinguished visiting fellow and a national fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. Dizolele has testified for both chambers of the U.S. Congress, as well as at the UN Security Council. He has served as an international election monitor and delegate in several countries, including Nigeria, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he was also embedded with UN peacekeepers in Ituri and South Kivu as a reporter.
Dizolele’s analyses have been published in the Journal of Democracy, New York Times, Newsweek International, International Herald Tribune, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, New Republic, Forbes, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and other outlets. A frequent commentator on African affairs, he has been a guest analyst on PBS’s NewsHour and Foreign Exchange; NPR's Tell Me More, On Point, and the Diane Rehm Show; BBC’s World News Update; and Al Jazeera’s The Stream, NewsHour, and Inside Story. Dizolele holds an international MBA and an MPP from the University of Chicago. He is a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve and is fluent in French, Norwegian, Spanish, Swahili, Kikongo, and Lingala and proficient in Danish and Swedish. He is the author of the forthcoming biography, Mobutu: The Rise and Fall of the Leopard King (Random House).
Congo’s Election is a Farce, The Washington Post, December 29, 2018
Waiting for Democracy in Congo, Foreign Affairs, August 17, 2018
What Mobutu Did Right, Democracy Lab, Foreign Policy, May 9, 2014
Congo is too Big to Fail, Foreign Policy, September 3, 2013
Back to Africa, Foreign Policy, November 5, 2012
The DRC’s Crumbling Democracy, Journal of Democracy, July 2012
A Crisis in the Congo, Foreign Policy, December 14, 2011
Joseph Kabila and Where the Election in Congo Went Wrong, Foreign Affairs, November 28, 2011
Battle After Ballot: Ivory Coast’s Bloody Presidential Standoff, Newsweek International, April 10, 2011
It’s Time to Hold Rwanda Accountable for Its War Crimes, The New Republic, and October 5, 2010
The Mirage of Democracy in DRC, Journal of Democracy, July 2010
Bush’s Quiet Successes, Hoover Digest, Stanford University, Winter 2009
Congo’s Conflict, Forbes, December 22, 2008
The Toll of Small Arms (with Rachel Stohl), The New York Times, September 5, 2006
How to End the Deadliest War in Africa, Hoover Digest, Stanford University, Summer 2006
Eye on Africa: Mali’s Democracy, United Press International, December 21, 2004
The UN in Congo: The Failure of a Peacekeeping Mission, The New York Times, May 10, 2004
Kabila Needs Real Help Now, The International Herald Tribune, November 12, 2003
Africa’s Great Lakes region has become synonymous with conflict. Over the last five decades, this region has seen genocides, ethnic violence, land disputes, civil war, cross border conflict and a multi-national war. Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo have been affected by one or many of these destabilizing factors. The course introduces students to the main issues affecting peace, stability and development in the Great Lakes.
Africa’s Security Challenges introduces students to Africa’s current and emerging security threats, and identifies and examines ways to resolve these challenges in a holistic manner so as to sustain security, stability and development. The course provides: (1) An overview of the sociopolitical and historical security landscapes of Africa; (2) A critical examination of the drivers of insecurity in Africa, an analysis of governance practices and assessment of contested democratic transitions and violence; (3) An analysis of the role that the mismanagement of resources, foreign actors and international cooperation have played in maintaining, perpetrating or changing the security dynamics and trends. We take a closer look at Western engagement and regional cooperation in the fight against extremist groups such as Boko Haram and Al-Shabaab, and how their policies impact regional peace and development.