Nizar Manek is Founder and Managing Director of Periplus Research, a London-based firm providing insight and strategic advice for boards, senior executives, investment committees and legal teams operating in frontier and emerging economies. Its work draws on knowledge dispersed across local institutions and human relationships, examining government intent and counterparty conduct and their implications for commercial strategy, transactions and dispute resolution, principally in infrastructure, energy and resources. Its networks have been deployed on engagements in 52 of Africa's 54 countries.

Over fifteen years, he has built the in-country networks, collection and assessment methods, and compliance frameworks behind hundreds of specialised engagements across Africa, the Middle East and Asia, much of this work predating Periplus. Earlier engagements included source reporting and assessment for assignments delivered under NDA through leading strategic intelligence and disputes advisory firms, as well as work with arbitration practices, development finance institutions and European foreign ministries. That experience now underpins Periplus’s own assessments and strategic advice.

The practice draws on the Track II tradition of informal diplomacy and mediation. It took form around the Ethiopian civil war and Red Sea corridor through relationships built during years in Addis Ababa. The networks extended from there, subregion by subregion, at clients’ request, supported by resident coordinators. The networks behind Periplus now comprise several thousand research associates across 85 jurisdictions, gathering information through conversations with well-placed sources. Engagements span upstream M&A, mining portfolio monitoring, subsea cable transit rights, telecoms market entry and concession liability. The same capability has supported peace processes and mediation, alongside boundary, treaty, and maritime matters.

Earlier career as a correspondent for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, and Africa Confidential, covering the Horn of Africa, Red Sea, and Gulf issues, the Middle East and North Africa, and West Africa and the Sahel through multiple regime changes. Work in the Financial Times, Jane's Intelligence Review, Foreign Affairs, Le Monde Diplomatique, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, and the London Review of Books. Academic work on political economy and ethnography with Harvard’s Center for International Development. International election observation missions with the OSCE. Member, UN Security Council Affairs Division Pool of Experts. Recognition from the European Press Prize, Overseas Press Club of America, Foreign Press Association in London, and Transparency International. Studied at LSE, Columbia Law and Business Schools, and SOAS.

Based in London; previously Addis Ababa, Cairo, Tunis, Istanbul, Yerevan, Athens.