The Redemption of Democracy in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Role of the United Nations

Thursday, May 6, 2010
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
(Pacific)
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
Speaker: 
  • Mvemba Dizolele

Mvemba Phezo Dizolele is the Peter J. Duignan Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution in Palo Alto, CA and an African Studies visiting scholar at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC.

His analyses have been published in the New York Times, International Herald Tribune, St Louis Post-Dispatch and other outlets. A frequent commentator on African affairs, he  has been a guest analyst on PBS' NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria, NPR's On Point and the Diane Rehm Show, the BBC World News, Al Jazeera and the Voice of America.

Dizolele was a fellow at the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and covered the 2006 historic elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He served as an election monitor with the Carter Center in the run-off between Joseph Kabila and Jean-Pierre Bemba. He was also embedded with United Nations peacekeepers in Congo's war-torn Ituri and South Kivu provinces as a reporter.

He has spoken extensively on the DRC at various institutions, including the US Institute of Peace, US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, Yale University Law School and Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

He is currently working on his book, Mobutu: the Rise and Fall of the Leopard King, a biography of the late Congolese president to be published by Random House UK.