Diplomatic Engagement and Africa's Response To Armed Conflicts and Violent Extremism | International Non-governmental Organization in D.C.

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Lilian Atanga MBA, PhD, and Chair

Lilian Atanga holds a PhD in Gender, Discourse and Politics from Lancaster University, Great Britain. Lilian is an Associate Professor and Researcher on Gender and Politics, formerly at the University of Bamenda, Cameroon, and currently at the Pan-African University, Tlemcen, Algeria. She is also a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa. She was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Florida. She Lilian is widely published, including several articles and books - ‘Blood, Tears and the Keyboard: Women’s Participation in the Southern Cameroons’ Conflict’ in Fonkem Achankeng Porcupine in a Python’s Throat: The Ambazonia Story in West Central Africa (2023) and with Sally Mboumien - When the Sun Turns Red: Tears from a Land in Despair (2023); and with Stacey Mitchell and Veraline Nchotu

Lilian has been a member of the CDN since 2020 and has worked with the organization, advocating and facilitating frank dialogue and negotiations for durable peace between conflicting parties. Lilian has worked with her team to support and facilitate intra-group dialogue among the Anglophone Separatist leaders and communities. Lilian together with Henry Atem have reflected on the Ambazonia /Cameroon Peace Talks Part 1 and the Canadian Talks & the Future of Ambazonia. She is also a member of the South West North West Women’s Task Force, a leading women’s coalition dedicated to peace in the Anglophone Conflict.

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Henry Atem MA, MBA Member and Former Chair

Henry Atem is the Executive Director at the United States Center for Electoral Support (USICES) and directs the programs and projects of USICES. He is a career elections expert with over ten years of professional experience in election administration, assessment, monitoring, and assistance. He has served within an Election Management Body, Intergovernmental, and International Nongovernmental Organizations including the African Union, United Nations, United Nations Development Programme, International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, the Carter Center and others. Henry has participated in over 15 international election observation missions and possesses expertise in election assistance programming and advice mainly in Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe.

Henry Atem is an active member of the ACE Election Knowledge and Practitioners Network and have shared expert advice to many junior and aspiring election professionals and contributed to the ACE web content. He is a contributor to the Washington based Electoral Violence Prediction Market, an initiative of the U.S. State Department’s Bureau for Conflict Stabilization Operations. Henry has written and contributed to publications relating to the conduct of elections including an “Assessment of Electoral Violence in Africa”, “Road Map to Credible Elections in Algeria”, “Fake News and Disinformation: An Election Integrity Issue”. As an International trainer, he has facilitated many training programs for election officials across the globe. He holds a Graduate Certificate in Election Administration from the University of Minnesota, a Master’s in Electoral Policy and Administration from the School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy, a Master’s in Democracy and Governance from Georgetown University, and an MBA from Southern New Hampshire University, United States of America.

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Agnes NzomeneSenior Research Assistant

Dr. Agnes Nzomene Kahouo Foda is a distinguished scholar, educator, and advocate whose work bridges the fields of women and gender studies, social work, qualitative research, and educational leadership. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina, where her research focused on the intersections of immigration, gender role expectations, marital dynamics, and access to higher education among sub-Saharan African-born individuals in the United States.

With a strong foundation in social work—holding both a Master of Social Work (MSW) and a Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) from Rutgers University—Dr. Nzomene brings a deeply human-centered approach to her academic and community work. She also holds a Seminar in Field Instruction (SIFI) Certificate from Columbia University, underscoring her commitment to mentorship and professional development in social work education.

Dr. Nzomene’s scholarship has been widely recognized. She is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, including the Rhude M. Patterson Fellowship, the Patterson Wardlaw Memorial Scholarship, the U.S. State Department’s Critical Language Scholarship, the GADE Cross-Institutional Collaboration Award, and the 2025 UNESCO Center for Peace/U.S. Federation of UNESCO Clubs Outstanding African Woman Award.

Her research and writing have been featured in national and international conferences and publications. Notable works include a book chapter on durable refugee resettlement solutions, and journal articles addressing the erasure of Black social work pioneers, the marginalization of Black women doctoral students, and the lived experiences of Cameroonian immigrants in the U.S.

Beyond academia, Dr. Nzomene is a passionate community leader. She is the founder of No Child in Tears Inc., an international NGO dedicated to promoting literacy, uplifting the spirit of the youths, empowering women and girls, and reducing maternal mortality through education. She also serves as a founding board member and Director of Immigrant Affairs at the African Immigrant Community Center (AICC) in New York.

In her multifaceted roles as program coordinator, research assistant, gender consultant, and educational advisor, Dr. Nzomene continues to champion equity, inclusion, and transformative education for marginalized communities around the world.

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Rogers OrockAssistant Professor, Africana Studies Program, Lafayette College

My research is concerned with the elites, morality, discourse, and the political imagination of leadership, governance, and development in Central and West African societies (Cameroon, Gabon, and Nigeria). My ethnographic and theoretical interests revolve around elites, development discourse, Freemasonry and moral panics over homosexuality, and a critical engagement with rumor, conspiracy theories, and questions of political morality and narratives of coloniality and decoloniality in postcolonial situations in Africa.

My most recent book is a co-authored with Peter Geschiere (University of Amsterdam), titled Conspiracy Narratives in Postcolonial Africa: Freemasonry, Homosexuality, and Illicit Enrichment (University of Chicago Press 2024). The book is a study of rumors and conspiracy theories in the wake of a moral panic over a perceived “rise” in homosexuality and the proliferation of Western esoteric lodges that engulfed Cameroon and Gabon beginning in the early twenty-first century. The book shows how attacks on elites as homosexual predators corrupting the nation became a powerful outlet for mounting populist anger against the excesses and corruption of national regimes in the two countries.

Previously, with Wale Adebanwi, I co-edited Elites and the Politics of Accountability in Africa (link is external) (University of Michigan Press 2021) as well as a special issue of Africa: Journal of the International Africa Institute) on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Achille Mbembe’s continued inspiring argument about the meaning of power and authoritarian complicity in the postcolony in Africa. Currently, I am writing on race, empire, and conspiracy theories on French-African relations. Some aspects of this recent work includes a critical analysis of the “Anglophone question” in Cameroon.

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Prof Willibroad Dze NgwaExpert

Willibroad Dze-Ngwa is a Professor of Political History and International Relations in the University system of Cameroon. Dze-Ngwa is the Founding President of the Heritage Higher (University) Institute of Peace and Development Studies, Cameroon and the Executive Director of Africa Network against Illiteracy, Conflicts and Human Rights Abuses (ANICHRA). He studied at the University of Yaoundé I-Cameroon and then studied Political Sciences at the Donahue Institute of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA with a focus on Peace and Security Studies. Professor Dze-Ngwa is a Senior Fellow and Consultant on terrorism and violent extremism with the Global Center on Cooperative Security.

He is a UN-trained independent Consultant in Disarmament, Demobilization, Reintegration and Reconciliation (DDRR) of ex-combatants of terrorism and violent extremism. He is a double US State Department Alumnus and has lectured in several US Universities. As Senior Fulbright Scholar-In-Residence, Dze Ngwa taught at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at Savannah State University, Georgia. He is currently a Visiting Professor at l’Universite d’Artois in France. Professor Dze Ngwa is a distinguished researcher in violent extremism and conflicts in divided societies.

In November he submitted the results of a mind-searching research to the German Fredrich Ebert Foundation in Berlin on the different conflicts in all the ten regions of Cameroon with an effective Conflict Man of the country. He is one of the fourteen members of the Franco-Cameroon Mixed Commission of researchers on “the role and commitment of France in Cameroon in the fight against independence and opposition movements from 1941 to 1971”. His areas of interest include Peace and Conflict Studies, Humanitarian Action, Democratic Governance, migration and genocide studies, Election management, DDR, and Social research.

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Dr Budji KefenExpert

Kefen Budji holds a PhD in Anthropology (minor: Peace Studies) from the University of Notre Dame (USA), alongside three masters; two in Anthropology (Notre Dame 2021, Catholic University of Cameroon 2015), and one in Cross-Cultural Communication and Media through the prestigious Chevening Scholarship (Newcastle University UK 2018).

As a sociocultural-linguistic anthropologist, her current research focuses the intersection between armed conflict, new communication technologies, and migration (displacement, settlement, and transnationalism). Since 2020, she has been prolifically researching, writing, presenting, and publishing on armed conflict in Cameroon referred to as the Anglophone Crisis. Examples of her work include the peer-reviewed article, “Utilizing Sounds of Mourning as Protest and Activism: The 2019 Northwestern Women’s Lamentation March within the Anglophone Crisis in Cameroon”; conference presentations like, “The Semiotics of Material Objects within the Performativity of Political Discourse: The ‘Coffin Revolution’ of the Anglophone Crisis in Cameroon”; and her PhD dissertation, “Transnational, Agentive, and Connected: Anglophone Cameroonian Women in Migration, Communication, and Conflict”.

Also, Kefen has collaborated with other scholars, practitioners, and grassroots/ community-based organizations to address issues linked to the Crisis. Some examples include La Liberte Arts Group’sTheatre of the Oppressedproject to actively decry the Anglophone Crisis and work for long-term peace as social justice; and KPAAM-CAM’s COREWO (Convergence Research Workshop) project. This project involves training scholars from various disciplines within five Cameroonian universities on collaborative research among internally displaced persons, and on providing actionable solutions to challenges they and destination populations face. Kefen further practices other creative forms of knowledge dissemination (poetry, creative nonfiction, fiction, audiovisual products, and drama), reviews for journals, and recently completed a postdoc as a teaching scholar in the department of Anthropology, University of Notre Dame.

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Elisabeth NM Ayuk-Etang Expert

Elisabeth NM Ayuk-Etang is a talented and dedicated multidisciplinary tenured Associate Professor with proven track record of teaching excellence, research contributions and mentoring of students for about 20 years, in Environmental Humanities, with a focus on Ecofeminism, Environmentalism and Women Studies through literary narratives. Her teaching, research and community outreach is built on Women’s relationship with the environment (ecofeminism) and their reaction towards contemporary environmental challenges such as climate change, food security etc from a social science and Humanities perspectives

She holds a PhD in African Literature, specifically on Ecofeminism and Black Women’s Writings. She has a post-Masters diploma in Literatures of the America, a master’s degree in Commonwealth Literary Studies, a Post graduate Higher teacher’s Training diploma in Education and a BA in English.

She is a recipient of the prestigious “Janet Hennessey Dilenscheider Scholar Rescue Awards of the Arts”, as well as the University of Michigan African Presidential Scholars (UMAPS) Award.

She has supervised two Ph.D Dissertations and about eight master’s degrees thesis in the humanities. She has reviewed several published books, sat on panels in book launch, seminars and conferences as well as she has been coordinator, moderator, and organizer of workshops, seminars and conferences. She has been guest speaker to several universities and events around the world, amongst which are Stanford University, University of California, Santa Barbara and Pennsylvania State University

Elisabeth has been chaired of the Department of English at the University of Buea for about half a decade (five years). During this time, she was the staff representative to the University Senate and council.

Her tenacity as a recognized international scholar with extra ordinary ability won her a seat as a fellow in the Institute of International Education – Scholar Recue Fund (IIE-SRF) and Scholar at Risk (SAR) 2022. This Highly competitive fellowship validated her ability as an extra ordinary professor at University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), when she became lead Professor of her courses, at both graduate and undergraduate programs.

Her outreach programs have been solicited by many universities in the world, including Stanford University in 2023 and Pennsylvania State University. Her acceptance to teach at Xavier University of Louisiana (XULA), changed so many dynamics in the Core program where she used her artistic muse to fused Environmentalism, Women Studies and Literature, in creating a program on Ecofeminism. As an international scholar with teaching experience from Africa, to UCSB, a Predominantly White Institution (PWI) and XULA a Historically Black Catholic University (HBCU) speaks volume to her wealth of experience in the field of Environmental Humanities.