Mashood Issaka

Senior Program Officer | Issaka@ipinst.org

Mashood Issaka is Senior Program Officer with the Africa program. In addition to coordinating program activities on Africa, he focuses on policy issues in peace and security in African states and analyzes their implications for decision making in the African Union, Africa’s regional economic communities and the UN. His interests include regional arrangements for crisis response and the role of current and new actors in security and development in Africa.

Mashood also oversees IPI’s Africa Working Papers Series: Security Challenges in Africa -- Regional Capacities to Respond. This series examines threats in the continent, such as conflict and security, organized crime and drug trafficking, corruption and money laundering, climate change and risks to resource, maritime piracy and migration, and the nexus between disease and security.

He also coordinates the flagship outreach and advocacy programs: the African Leaders Series – which hosts leading African statespersons in New York around the UN General Assembly; and the African Junior Professionals Fellows Program, a collaboration with the Conflict, Security and Development Group of King’s College London, which trains and prepares young African scholars as analysts in peace and security. He manages major IPI policy events across Africa.

Prior to joining IPI, Mashood directed government and INGO decentralization and development programs with Ghana’s Ministry of Local Government. He has also worked for the UN Capital Development Fund in New York and Oxfam International in Washington, DC.

Mashood holds a Master of Public Administration Degree from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, New York, with specializations in advanced management techniques and democratic theory and practice in Africa. At Columbia he was a Philip E. Mosley Fellow. Mashood has a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Geography from the University of Lagos and a Certificate in Strategic Planning from the University of Ghana School of Administration.

In addition to English, he speaks the West African languages of Hausa, Twi and Kotokoli.


Selected Publications

• Mashood Issaka and Elijah Dickens Mushemeza, rapporteurs, "Operationalizing the African Standby Force," (New York:  International Peace Institute, 2010)
• Mashood Issaka and Kapinga Ngandu, "Pacific Settlement of Border Disputes - Lessons from the Resolution of the Bakassi Boundary Affair," (New York: International Peace Academy, 2008)
• Batabiha Bushoki and Mashood Issaka, "Civil Society and Democratic Transitions in the Democratice Republic of Congo, Burundi, and Rwanda," (New York: International Peace Academy, 2005)
• Mashood Issaka, “The Role of External Institutions in Democratic Reform in Ghana” Paper, African Studies Association and Canadian Association of African Studies, New Orleans, Louisiana, 2005
• Mashood Issaka and Arthur Bainomugisha, "The Role of Civil Society in Peacebuilding in the Great Lakes Region," (New York: International Peace Academy, 2004)