Experts on countries of origin by country

Esther S. Braud is a strategic and mission-driven leader in global health, and program management, with more than 25 years of experience designing and implementing large-scale public health initiatives. She has a strong track record in social and behavior change (SBC), public health in emergencies, capacity-building, and program evaluation, working across Africa, Asia, and humanitarian contexts.

As a Senior Advisor for Social and Behavior Change at USAID’s Office of HIV/AIDS, Esther provided technical and programmatic leadership to optimize HIV prevention effortsacross PEPFAR countries. She has successfully managed multi-million-dollar global health programs, ensuring strategic alignment, operational efficiency, and sustainable impact. She also oversaw budget planning and resource mobilization to support SBC-focused initiatives, including end-user research to develop innovative HIV prevention solutions. Previously, as Senior Liaison for Risk Communication and Preparedness at UNICEF, Esther managed a USAID-funded grant for community engagement in humanitarian settings, overseeing programmatic direction, financial operations, and donor reporting. At JSI Research & Training Institute, she led the West Africa portfolio for a USAID global nutrition… Read more

Kendra Dupuy is a social science researcher and Assistant Professor of African politics. She has expertise with quantitative & qualitative research on energy, climate change, environment, natural resource management, democracy, human rights, civil society, education, and forced migration. She is a certified project manager, technical writer, and program & project evaluator. She has has deep expertise in the African region and specifically on countries in West Africa, East Africa, southern Africa, and the DR Congo.

Michelle Johnson is Associate Dean of Faculty for the Social Sciences and Professor of Anthropology at Bucknell University. A cultural anthropologist specializing in religion and ritual in Africa and the contemporary African diaspora (i.e., Africans in Europe and the United States), she has conducted extensive fieldwork in Guinea-Bissau and with Guinean immigrants in Portugal. She has held grants from the Social Science Research Council, the U.S. Department of Education (Fulbright-Hays), and the Institute for Citizens & Scholars (formerly the Woodrow Wilson Foundation). Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Religion in Africa, African Studies Review, Anthropology Quarterly, and Food and Foodways. She is author of Re-making Islam in African Portugal: Lisbon - Mecca - Bissau (Indiana University Press, 2020) and co-author (with Edmund "Ned" Searles) of Reciprocity Rules: Friendship and Compensation in Fieldwork Encounters (Lexington Books, 2021). She also provides expert testimony on asylum cases pertaining to West Africa and the contemporary African diaspora on topics such as genital cutting, forced marriage, and religious persecution and freedom. She teaches courses on cultural anthropology, the anthropology of religion, African Studies, and the life course and was… Read more

Academic and practicing attorney, based in USA (admitted to AZ bar), experienced in written and oral expert reports in variety of national formats, on many social groups and diverse matters in West Africa and Africa broadly.

Depending on issue/claim basis, I may be able to provide expertise on any country in West Africa. I have testified and provided expertise for cases from: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, The Gambia, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo.

Dr. Onuoha is a HIPAA Certified expert witness who has written several expert witness reports and opinions, and testified in immigration evaluation and immigration detention hearings over the years. His expertise spans asylum, human rights and human security claims, persecution and discrimination based on political associations (including party politics, social and environmental activism), religion, ethnicity, identity, customs and culture (gender-based persecution ranging from forced marriage, child marriage, polygamy and to FGM, among other gender-related cases), and self-determination cases of people fleeing violence and conflict from West African countries with similar dynamics.

As an African social anthropologist, he has taught and designed courses in American universities bordering on Female genital cutting, Gang-related violence, General country knowledge, LGBTQ+ issues, Political associations, Race/ethnicity, Religion, Trafficking, Violence against children, Violence against women. He has extensive experience on a variety of theorical, epistemological and practical cultural problems in African societies.

Dr David Seddon is a social scientist with more than 40 years experience in Africa and the Middle East, and Nepal, who has produced around 500 country expert witness reports 

I am a specialist in the history and anthropology of West Africa, especially related to conflict, gender-based violence, and traditional harmful practices. For the past 17 years I have lived and worked across West Africa, in particular Liberia and Ghana, as well as Benin, Burkina Faso, and Côte d'Ivoire. Since 2019 I have worked as the Director of an Oxfordshire-based research company, Résolu Ltd. Prior to this, I held positions as Assistant Professor in Gender Violence at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Tutor in Gender, Geography & Environment at University of Oxford, and various other roles related to gender-based violence research in West Africa. My work has been published in Routledge, Third World Quarterly, and Democracy In Africa. I completed my DPhil at University of Oxford School of Geography and the Environment in 2016.

Dr Leo Zeilig is a writer and researcher who has published extensively on African politics and society for more than twenty-five years. He is an editor of the Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE) and has written a range of books, reports and articles for a variety of organisations and audiences.