Darlington Tshuma
Darlington Tshuma, Ph.D., a Researcher at the Istituto Affari Internazionali’s (IAI) ‘Mediterranean, Middle East and Africa’ programme and a Think Visegrad Fellow at the Institute for International Relations (IRR) in Prague. Previously, he served as Advisor (on secondment by the World Food Programme) to the UN Under-Secretary-General and Special Adviser on Africa at the United Nations Secretariat in New York (2024-2025). Between 2025-2026, he was an ARUA-Carnegie New York / Mastercard Foundation Early Career Research Fellow (ECR), hosted by the Institute for Peace and Security Studies (IPSS) at Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia, and previously held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Thabo Mbeki African School of Public and International Affairs (TM School) in South Africa. In 2021, he was an inaugural Africa Policy Fellow at the Florence School of Transnational Governance (STG) at the European University Institute in Florence. His work spans various aspects of governance in Africa including colonial encounters, human rights, democracy, gender, human security, African development, African nationalism, leadership and contemporary African politics. Some of his work has been featured in several prominent media outlets, including the UN’s Africa Renewal, South Africa’s Mail and Guardian and Daily Maverick, AffarInternazionali, Africa at LSE and The Conversation Africa (TCA).
From his publications:
- “African customs and traditions and the indigenization of international humanitarian law in armed conflict”, in International Review of the Red Cross, No. 926 (August 2024), p. 639-658
- (with Gilbert Tinashe Zvaita) “The Quest for Peace and the Limits of Arbitration in Abyei”, in Stanley Osezua Ehiane, Lukong Stella Shulika and Clayton Hazvinei Vhumbunu (eds), Engagement of Africa in Conflict Dynamics and Peace Architectures, Singapore, Palgrave Macmillan, April 2024
- “AfCTFA and Regional Integration: Implications for Peace and Security in the Horn of Africa”, in Horn of Africa Bulletin, October 2022, p. 7-10
- “What If Africa Stops Receiving Foreign Aid? The Risk of Reversing Development Gains in a Covid-19 World”, in EUISS Briefs, No. 1 (January 2022)
- “IGAD’s Role in Regional Reconciliation”, in Horn of Africa Bulletin, Vol. 32, No. 1 (August/September 2020), p. 12-17
- (with Gilbert Tinashe Zvaita) “Political Fatalism and Youth Apathy in South Africa: An Analysis of the 2019 General Election”, in Conflict Trends, Vol. 19, No. 3 (2019), p. 20-30
- “Healing the Wounds of the Past: Peacebuilding Prospects for Zimbabwe”, in Conflict Trends, Vol. 19, No. 4 (2019), p. 14-21
- “Accelerating & Sustaining the Peace Process: Challenges & Opportunities”, in Tana Papers 2019: Political Dynamics in the Horn of Africa: Nurturing the Emerging Peace Trends, 2019, p. 10-15
- “Reconciliation, Integration and Healing Efforts in Zimbabwe”, in Conflict Trends, Vol. 18, No. 2 (2018), p. 19-26
