Africa's Increasing Strategic Significance: Reflections of a Scholar-Practitioner 

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Ambassador J. Peter Pham shared his thoughts on "Africa's Increasing Strategic Significance: Reflections of a Scholar-Practitioner" and answered questions from ASMEA Vice President Dr. Robert Lloyd and audience members.

A longtime staunch advocate of robust American engagement with Africa, Ambassador J. Peter Pham is a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council's Africa Center. He returned to the Center in March 2021 after concluding public service as United States Special Envoy for the Sahel Region and the United States Special Envoy for the Great Lakes Region of Africa at the US Department of State.

Prior to joining the Atlantic Council in 2011, Ambassador Pham was a tenured associate professor of justice studies, political science, and Africana studies at James Madison University, where he was director of the Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs.

Ambassador Pham served as member of the USAID-funded International Republican Institute (IRI) delegation monitoring the historic post-conflict national elections in Liberia in 2005. He also served on the IRI pre-election assessment (2006) and election observation delegations to Nigeria (2007, 2011) and Somaliland (2010). He is a frequent guest lecturer on African affairs at the Foreign Service Institute, the US Army War College, the Joint Special Operations University, and other US government professional educational institutions. Ambassador Pham also served on the Senior Advisory Group of the US Africa Command from 2008-2013.

From 2008 to 2017, he was vice president of the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) and founding editor-in-chief of its peer-reviewed Journal of the Middle East and Africa.

This webinar was held May 5, 2021.