James Emmanuel Wanki is President John Fitzgerald Kennedy Fellow, James Snitzler Fellow, and Edward S. Mason Fellow at Kennedy School of Government, Harvard. Until recently, he was World Bank–United Nations Country Advisor (Senior Specialist) for the Central African Republic (CAR) on the Humanitarian-development-Security Nexus – with the mandate of bringing together international partners to ensure joint-up planning of collective outcomes and development of synergized programmes to meet CAR’s stabilization and development needs. In this capacity, he also served as advisor to CAR’s Ministry of Planning, Economy and International Cooperation’s National Peace-building and Post-conflict Stabilisation Secretariat (RCPCA).

James’s career spans 15+years of cross-cutting engagements in political, representational, conflict management, coordination, consultational, developmental and humanitarian roles within multilateral organizations such as the EU, AU, UN and World Bank. Most of these have been spent in leadership responsibilities on the field where he has both implemented and overseen various dimensions of the international community’s response to complex multidimensional emergencies in conflict-ridden settings across Africa.  He holds graduate and advanced degrees from Africa, Europe and the United States, and he has studied at the University of Buea (Cameroon), University of Westminster (London), University of Limerick (Ireland), University of Oxford (UK) and the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University (US).

His core research interests include: fragility, conflict and violence (FCV); public policymaking; cybersecurity and intelligence; conflict-to-post-conflict transitions/stabilization; conflict/political analysis; gender, humanitarian-development-security nexus programming; climate change, livelihoods  and vulnerability in global south; gender, human rights, geopolitics, protection of civilians, and coordination in context of complex humanitarian emergencies.