The Nordic Africa Institute

Kwesi Aning

NAI Associate

Kwesi Aning

Professor Kwesi Aning is the Director, Faculty of Academic Affairs & Research, Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre, Ghana-He holds a doctorate in Political Science from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark in 1998 and a BA (Hons) in History from the University of Ghana in 1986. He has served with the African Union from 2005 to 2007 as the first continental Expert on the Common African Defence and Security Policy (CADSP) and Counter-terrorism located in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia with responsibility for the African Centre for the Study and Research on Terrorism (ACSRT). Subsequently, he served as a senior consultant to the Department of Political Affairs (DPA) of the UN in New York and wrote a Secretary-General's Report for the Security Council on 'The relationship between the UN and regional organizations especially the African Union' in 2008.

He served on the World Economic Forum's (WEF) Council on Conflict Prevention. In 2006, he was appointed as the first independent evaluator of the UN’s Global Programme on Strengthening the Legal Regime against Terrorism. In 2014, he again wrote (together with Peter Allen) the second evaluation report on the UN's Global Report. In 2015, he was appointed by the UN Secretary General to serve as a member of his Advisory Group to the Peacebuilding Fund. In 2021, he served as a senior consultant on the Independent Project Evaluation on Support to the Maldives on Counter-terrorism, and in 2022 appointed as a UN Expert on evaluating the EU’s Counter-terrorism interventions in Sri Lanka. From October 2022, he will serve on the World Food Programs (WFP) Security Advisory Board. Research interests include peacekeeping economies, hybrid political orders, security sector reform, and stability operations.

Publications

Full list of publications (Google scholar) External link, opens in new window.