Expert Team: Practice Groups

Majak D’Agoôt is a veteran of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) war for independence of South Sudan where he rose from the ranks to hold higher echelon staff and command positions. He holds an MSc in Quantitative Finance and a PhD in Financial Economics from SOAS University of London. He also obtained an MSc in Security Sector Management from the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, Cranfield University, and an MA in War Studies from King’s College London. He previously served as deputy chief of intelligence of Sudan and Defence minister of South Sudan.

He is currently a visiting senior research fellow with the African Leadership Centre at the School of Social Sciences and Public Policy of King’s College London and part of its senior leadership practitioners’ group. He also runs an independent think tank in Juba, South Sudan – the Changing Horizon Institute for Strategic Policy Analysis (CHI-SPA). His current research interest covers risk management, intelligence, irregular warfare (insurgency and counterinsurgency), and civil-military relations.

He has published articles in peer review journals such as Intelligence and National Security, Risk Research, Small Wars and Insurgencies, Defence and Security, Middle East Policy, Armed Forces & Society, and Political & Military Sociology.

Lt. Gen. Lazaro Kipkurui Sumbeiywo is a retired senior Kenyan military officer and internationally recognized peace mediator with over 35 years of distinguished service. He trained at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in the United Kingdom and rose through the ranks to become Commander of the Kenya Army in 2000, marking a career characterized by professionalism, integrity, and exemplary leadership.

General Sumbeiywo is best known for his role as Chief Mediator in the Sudan Peace Process, where he helped reconcile the positions of Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir and the late Colonel John Garang, leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A). His efforts were instrumental in ending more than two decades of conflict and culminated in the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) on January 9, 2005. He later contributed to the Agreement to Resolve the Crisis in South Sudan (ARCSS) in 2015, further reinforcing his role as a leading figure in regional peace diplomacy.

Beyond these landmark processes, General Sumbeiywo has continued to support peace and security initiatives across Africa as a trusted advisor on high-level mediation, civil–military relations, and post-conflict stabilization. He is a founding council member of the Nairobi-based Global Centre for Policy and Strategy (GLOCEPS) and serves in advisory capacities to organizations working on conflict resolution and regional security.

Widely regarded as one of Africa’s foremost military diplomats, General Sumbeiywo brings decades of experience bridging military leadership and diplomatic peacemaking.

Professor Baffour Agyeman-Duah has, since 2014, been the CEO of The John A. Kufuor Foundation, founded by a former President of the Republic of Ghana. Earlier, from 2008 to 2013, he was a Senior Special Advisor to the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) and, from 2005 to 2008, the Senior Governance Advisor (UNDP) in Tanzania. 

He was Associate Executive Director of the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), an independent public policy think-tank, which he co-founded in 1998. He continues to serve on the Center’s Board of Governors. He was a member of the Governing Council of the University of Ghana, the country’s premier university, from 2017 to 2024.

He served in Liberia in 1977 and Nigeria in 1998-99 as Elections Technical Expert for the US-based National Democratic Institute. As Elections Consultant with the Commonwealth Office in London, he served in Zimbabwe (2000), Sierra Leone (2002) and Cameroon (2004).

Between 1999 and 2004, he was an adjunct faculty member of the African Center for Strategic Studies (U.S. Defense Department), and participated in the ACSS Senior Leadership Seminars in Senegal, Botswana, Ethiopia and Washington, DC. 

He studied at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana; Ohio University; and the Josef Korbel School of International Affairs, University of Denver, where he earned the PhD degree in 1984. Between 1985 and 1994 he taught at Bennett College and the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, USA, and was a Fulbright Professor at the Legon Center for International Affairs, University of Ghana (1994-96). 

In addition to journal articles and book chapters, Prof. Agyeman-Duah has published monographs, edited two books including Ghana: Governance in the Fourth Republic (2008) and authored three books, United States and Ethiopia: Military Assistance and the Search for Security (1994); My Ghanaian Odyssey (2012); and General Acheampong: The Life and Times of Ghana’s Head of State (2021).

Dr. Daira Arana Aguilar is an Associate Researcher at the Institute of Social Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in the area of Social Actors and Processes. She holds a PhD in Public Policy from the School of Government and Public Transformation at Tecnológico de Monterrey, an MA in International Affairs from Anáhuac University Mexico, and a BA in International Relations from UNAM. She is a graduate of the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defence Studies and a Fellow at the USMEX Center at University of California San Diego (2024–2025).

Her research focuses on the participation of the armed forces in public life in Latin America, human rights applicable to the use of force and International Humanitarian Law, as well as the application of gender perspectives and feminist approaches in the fields of security and defence.

She has worked at the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Executive Secretariat of Mexico’s National Public Security System, the civil society organisation Causa en Común, and the Mexico City Secretariat of Citizen Security. She has also served as a consultant for Amnesty International, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Equis Justice for Women, and other institutions, focusing her work on citizen security, the use of force, the involvement of the armed forces in public security and national security tasks, standards for the protection of individuals, and the inclusion of a gender perspective within the armed and security forces.

She is a lecturer at Anáhuac University and at the Ibero-American University, and an adjunct professor at Tecnológico de Monterrey. She also directs Global Though, a think tank on international affairs.

Dr. Ayesha Siddiqa is an independent author and political scientist currently working as senior fellow, department of War Studies, King’s College, London from where she obtained her Ph.D as well. Earlier she was a research associate at the Center for International Studies and Diplomacy at SOAS.

Dr. Siddiqa was also a fellow at St Antony’s college, Oxford, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and a Ford Fellow. She has taught at University of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins University and has written two books: (a) Pakistan’s Arms Procurement and Military Buildup, 1979-99, and (b) Military Inc: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy.

She was also a civil servant and served as Director Naval Research at the Naval Headquarters. Her work focuses on military culture and organization, and civil-military relations.

Professor Augustin Loada obtained his academic qualifications in Burkina Faso and France, and has served as Professor of Public Law and Political Science in Burkina Faso since 1995. Complementing his academic pursuits, he has also practised law since 2016. Professor Loada was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Boston University, United States, and has been a member of the American Political Science Association (APSA) since 2000. 

He is the founder and was the inaugural Executive Director (2000–2014) of the Centre for Democratic Governance (CGD), a research institution in Burkina Faso focused on studies in governance and democratization. Additionally, Professor Loada established and directed the Institute for Governance and Development (IGD), which, in collaboration with APSA, organised a workshop entitled “Religion and Politics in Comparative Perspective” in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, in 2013. 

In November 2014, Professor Loada was appointed Minister of Civil Service, Labour, and Social Protection in the Transitional Government of Burkina Faso. Since 2016, he has undertaken regular missions to New Caledonia, a French territory in the Pacific, where he joined the United Nations Group of Electoral Experts and led this group from 2018 to 2025. While in Burkina Faso, Professor Loada continues to lecture at the university and oversee the operations of his law firm.

Colonel Auguste Denise Barry is a senior defense and security expert from Burkina Faso with over four decades of distinguished service in the national armed forces and the Burkinabè government. He is the founder and Executive Director of the Center for Strategic Studies in Defense and Security (CESDS) and is currently completing his PhD at the Institute for International Relations of Cameroon (IRIC), University of Yaoundé II-Soa.

Colonel Barry retired from the armed forces in August 2025 after a career spanning high-level command, strategic planning, and public leadership. His expertise covers defense and security governance, higher education, strategic foresight, geopolitics, mediation, peacebuilding, and conflict management and resolution. 

In parallel with his military career, Colonel Barry has built a strong academic and policy profile as a consultant to national governments, regional and international organisations, and international NGOs and think tanks such as Search for Common Ground and the Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF). He is also a widely respected university lecturer across West and Central Africa. In his home country, he has served as Minister of Security (2011) and as Minister of Territorial Administration, Decentralization and Security (2014-2015), and has advised the Presidency and Ministry of Defense in multiple senior roles. Internationally, he has contributed to numerous initiatives, including military advisor to the Special Representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations in CAR and most recently as coordinator of the security pillar for the AU–UN High-Level Independent Panel on Security and Development in the Sahel.

A recipient of numerous national and international honors, including Burkina Faso’s rank of Commander of the Order of Étalon, he is also an active author and speaker on peace, security sector reform, and prevention of conflict and violent extremism, contributing to policy dialogue at regional and global levels. Colonel Barry is a graduate of Cameroon’s International War College of Youndé, holds a Master’s degree in Strategy, Defense and Security by the University of Youndé II-Soa, and has earned numerous additional military and civilian qualifications. 

General Alberto José Mejía Ferrero (Ret.) is the former Commander of the Colombian National Army and the Colombian Military Forces. With a military career spanning more than four decades, he led Colombia’s armed forces between 2015 and 2018 during a pivotal period marked by peace negotiations between the Colombian government and the FARC, supporting the process that resulted in the group’s disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration, while upholding democratic civil–military relations.

During his tenure, General Mejía spearheaded a comprehensive institutional transformation to modernise Colombia’s military forces, strengthening operational effectiveness, professional standards, transparency, international cooperation, and compliance with human rights and international humanitarian law, including the implementation of the Plan Damasco doctrine, and the creation of key transparency and international cooperation bodies. He played a vital role in Colombia’s inclusion as a NATO Global Security Partner.

Following his retirement, he served as Colombia’s Ambassador to Australia and New Zealand (2019–2021), promoting bilateral relations and regional cooperation in the Indo-Pacific. He also worked as a consultant to the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) on military transformation and security sector reform and held academic and research positions in Australia and the United States. Currently, he is the honorary president of the Australia-Colombia Business Council in Bogotá and a visiting professor at the University of Los Andes’ School of Government and at the Nueva Granada Military University in leadership and national security.

General Mejía holds advanced degrees in Military Sciences, International Security, Strategic Studies, and National Security, and has received numerous national decorations, including Colombia’s highest honour Cruz de Boyacá, and the Colombian National Congress’s Order of Democracy. He has also been awarded the US Legion of Merit and has received the US Command and General Staff College and the US Army War College Hall of Fame distinctions.