Strategic Advisors

Gen. Martin Agwai

General Martin Agwai from Nigeria held a number of senior positions in National and international contexts. He culminated his very successful career in the position of Chief of Defence force of the Nigerian Armed Forces. In the international arena he was Deputy Military Adviser in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations in UN headquarters. He has field experience as the Deputy force Commander in the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone and commanded the AU/UN Hybrid Operation in Darfur.

Gen. Lamine Cissé

General Lamine Cissé from Senegal has held a number of senior positions at the national and international level. He culminated his military career in the position of Chief of Defence Staff. This was followed by his appointment as Minister of Interior and a series of International appointments which included the post of Head of Mission for the UN mission in the Central African Republic and Head of the United Nations Office for Western Africa. More recently, he led an SSR assessment mission for ECOWAS in Guinea.

Professor Eboe Hutchful

Eboe Hutchful is Professor of Africana Studies at Wayne State University, Detroit, USA, Director of African Security Dialogue and Research (ASDR) in Accra, Ghana, and Chair of the African Security Sector Network (ASSN).

Dr. Hutchful is a long-time researcher on civil-military relations, security sector reform, and international development and conflict issues. Among other works, he is the author of Ghana’s Adjustment Experience: The Paradox of Reform (James Currey, 2002), co-editor (with Wuyi Omitoogun) of Budgeting for the Military Sector in Africa: the Processes and Mechanisms of Control (Oxford University Press,  2006), and co-editor (with Abdoulaye Bathily) of  The Military and Militarism in Africa (Codesria Books, 1998). He has taught at several other universities in Africa and North America, including the University of Toronto, the University of Port Harcourt, and the University of Ghana. 

Dr. Hutchful is also a member of the International Advisory Board of the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF); the Advisory Group of the Global Facilitation Network for Security Sector Reform (GFN-SSR), the Advisory Group of the Global Facilitation Network for Security Sector Reform (GFN-SSR); and the erstwhile International Policing Advisory Council (IPAC) of the UN.

Clare Short

Clare Short is a British politician, and a member of the Labour Party. She was the Member of Parliament for Birmingham Ladywood from 1983 to 2010; for most of this period she was a Labour Party MP, but she resigned as the party whip in 2006 and served the remainder of her term as an Independent. She stood down as a Member of Parliament at the 2010 general election.

After the 1997 UK general election the Overseas Development Administration was given full departmental status as the Department for International Development, with Ms Short as the first cabinet-level Secretary of State for International Development. She retained this post throughout the first term of the Labour government, and beyond the 2001 UK general election into the second. On 9 March 1999, she gave a speech entitled ‘Security Sector Reform and the Elimination of Poverty’. This talk marked the publication that day of DFID’s first policy statement on SSR.