From Executive Director John-Patrick Ifedi

Welcome to the Council on African World Affairs website. Established in 2002, The Council is a nonpartisan institution dedicated to open, serious, and informed dialogue about issues relevant to the African World. It brings pre-eminent thinkers, experts, commentator, and leaders to interact with members through the distinguished speakers program. The Council seeks to isolate the important from the inconsequential and to link up people who can explain African world issues in accordance with historical, nuanced, and broad perspective. To paraphrase Woodrow Wilson, we do this because we feel that it is important that persons who make policy and those who act upon them and those who must function under the canopy of such policies must draw near to one another and feel that they are engaged in a common enterprise. The Council also engages in programs and initiatives dedicated to educational empowerment, good-governance and human development in the African World.

This website is an essential part of our effort to expose and connect our programs and activities to a national and international audience. On the site you will find information on our various initiatives programs, and features.

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Brief Biography

Born in Umuahia, Abia State, Nigeria, Dr. Ifedi hails from Utuh-Mba-Dike in Nnewi-South local government area of Anambra State.

For his High and Higher schools, he was educated at the prestigious Igbobi College, Lagos, Nigeria. Following his high school education, he attended the State University of Minnesota, Moorhead, Minnesota, earning his B.A. in Biology, Political Science and Sociology. He received the M.A. degree, Pi Sigma Alpha, in International Relations, Public Administration and U.S. Diplomatic History from the University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, North Dakota. His PhD is from Howard University and his areas of specialization are International Political Economy, Political Methodology, International Relations (Strategic and National Security Studies) and Comparative Politics (Africa and the Caribbean). In 1986, he was selected as an Institute for British and Irish Studies (IBIS) scholar for postdoctoral studies at St. Anthony's College, Oxford University, Oxford, England and Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. He has since studied at the University of Maryland, Baltimore where, in 1988, he earned a Certificate in Human Services Management.

Dr. Ifedi, a political scientist, is an adjunct lecturer at Howard University in Washington; D.C. and a member of the managerial staff of the Court Services Agency for the District of Columbia.

He has served on international democracy development missions in South Eastern Europe; the most prominent was as a member of the U.S. mission to Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1997. Dr. Ifedi served as an election supervisor in Tuzla, Bosnia-Herzegovina under the auspices of the U.S. State Department and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), where he participated in conducting Municipal elections, part of the implementation of the 1995 Dayton Accord that ended the Bosnia Civil War.

Dr. Ifedi is an Igbo culture adherent. He is titled in the Igbo tradition - member of Nze na Ozo Society - "OnosoEzeogidi"- in his hometown of Utuh, Nnewi-South, LGA of Anambra State. He was conferred a Chieftaincy title in 2003 - "Chiyereugo I" of Amaeke-Ovim, Isiukwuato, Abia State, Nigeria.