The U.S. as Peacemaker in Central Africa?

Joshua Z. Walker is the Director of Programs of the Congo Research Group at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation (CIC). He has been working in and researching the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) since 2004. Before joining CIC, he was a research associate at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research in Johannesburg, South Africa. He also worked for The Carter Center and the United Nations (UN) Peacekeeping mission in the DRC. His research on politics, economy, and culture in the DRC sits at the intersection of academic knowledge and policymaking. It has included work on extractive economies and their social effects, public culture, conflict, and politics.

Beverly Ochieng is a senior analyst in Control Risks’ Global Risk Analysis service. Based in Dakar, she is responsible for the coverage and analysis of Francophone Africa within the Sub-Saharan Africa team. She supports the monitoring and reporting for political, economic and security trends in at least 15 Francophone African nations, while specialising in the militancy and socioeconomic dynamics in the Sahel and regional geopolitics. Prior to joining Control Risks, Beverly worked as an Africa Specialist with BBC Monitoring, commentating extensively in English and Swahili on a range of issues, including recent military coups in West and Central Africa, Russian influence and global power competition in Africa, and tracking geopolitical and security trends across the African continent.

Dan M. Ford is a junior research fellow in the Global South Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Previously, Dan worked as a Research and Communications Assistant at the Global Interagency Security Forum (GISF), an organization focused on supporting the safety and security of humanitarian and development professionals across the world. Prior to that, Dan spent time working and interning in a variety of different organizations, focused mostly on international development, human rights, and conflict prevention and resolution. Dan speaks English, French, and Albanian.

Kelley Beaucar Vlahos is a senior advisor for the Quincy Institute and editorial director at Responsible Statecraft. She comes to QI from The American Conservative, where for three years she served as the magazine’s executive editor. Before joining TAC in 2017, Vlahos served as a contributing editor to the magazine, reporting and publishing regular articles on US war policy, civil liberties, foreign policy, veterans, and Washington politics since 2007. She also organized the magazine’s major annual foreign policy conference for the last three years. Prior to that, Vlahos was director of social media and a digital editor at WTOP News in Washington, DC from 2013 to 2017.