LinkedIn | nizar.manek.hoa@gmail.com | UK mobile/Signal/WhatsApp: +44 7301 511921
NIZAR MANEK — London-based international affairs consultant, strategic and operational risk adviser in commercial, government, and multilateral contexts, and HUMINT networks specialist — coordinate a premium human intelligence-led grassroots research network established to provide a qualitative reading grid on commercial and political issues across 50 under-examined economies in AFRICA, the MIDDLE EAST and CASPIAN. Distributed network access teams of senior long-term country, industry, and technical specialists with permanent ground presence, natural networks, cross sector experience and expertise:
(i) HORN & EASTERN AFRICA — Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan, Djibouti, Eritrea, Somalia, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, Mozambique;
(ii) WEST AFRICA & SAHEL — Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Niger, Senegal, Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Benin, Togo, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Gambia;
(iii) CENTRAL AFRICA — Gabon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo-Brazzaville, Chad, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea;
(iv) MIDDLE EAST & NORTH AFRICA — Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Türkiye, Iraqi Kurdistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria;
(v) SOUTH CAUCASUS & CENTRAL ASIA — Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Artsakh, Abkhazia, South Ossetia.
Multi-country track record on hundreds of contracts for bespoke consulting across ten-years for premium HUMINT, interpretive and analytical expertise, and strategic and operational advice on corporate strategy and positioning; government thinking, stakeholder mapping, and regulatory and policy dynamics; management quality, integrity, and shareholder insights; environmental, social, and governance issues, and supply chain dynamics; market entry/exit and international expansions and contractions, including M&A, JVs, minority stakes, integrations, and divestments; privatisation and bid dynamics; enforcement strategy in international arbitration and litigation; political and macroeconomic uncertainty and volatility, sanctions, and geopolitical undercurrents; ruling party, military, armed groups, and ethnic conflict dynamics, and track II diplomatic support — cross-sector associate network experience and expertise in telecommunications; energy & renewables; metals & mining; transport & logistics; infrastructure; industrials; aerospace & defence; financial services; and fast-moving consumer goods. Also a member of the UN Security Council Affairs Division Pool of Experts.
Previously an award-winning specialist Africa and Middle East correspondent and researcher, with several thousand articles appearing in Bloomberg News, Businessweek and Markets magazines, Africa Confidential, London Review of Books, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Financial Times, Le Monde diplomatique, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, Jeune Afrique, and Jane’s Intelligence Review; several honours including from Overseas Press Club of America, European Press Prize, and Foreign Press Association in London; academic publishing with Routledge Handbook on the Horn of Africa, Konrad Adenauer-Stiftung, and Harvard’s Center for International Development; and lecturing for financial, multilateral, and development institutions, and track II mediators.
Education: London School of Economics & Political Science (‘11); Columbia Law School & Columbia Business School (‘12); Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism (‘12); London School of Oriental & African Studies (‘22); Boğazici University Istanbul (‘22); Armenian School of Languages & Cultures Yerevan (‘21); and Koya University Erbil (‘22).
Recent commercial projects: sampling
Business intelligence and advice pre- and post-licence acquisition on telecommunications privatisation, bid dynamics, stakeholder mapping, and government intentions relating to emerging regulations, economic policies, and shifting macro-economic and political context under three-year contract;
Post-coup stakeholder mapping and competitor positioning around prospective mining investments in high-grade iron, gold, and titanium ore deposits; and socio-political context assessments of government intentions around rapid changes to mining legislation and emerging disputes under new military regimes;
Due diligence ahead of a potential international mining acquisition finding significant gold supply chain vulnerabilities including partial control by competing rebel groups, bribery of a government minister, suspicious transactions, and money laundering concerns;
Fact-finding, political advice, and court admissible evidence with supporting legal strategy and argumentation in an investor-state shipping and ports operation dispute before multiple arbitral tribunals in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia;
Fraud investigation for a sovereign wealth fund monitoring a multi-jurisdictional dispute over an expropriated telecommunications licence between rival military factions following multiple regime changes in interlinked countries;
Intelligence and recommendations on market entry/exit strategies, due diligence of local private and public sector joint venture partners in M&A, and ESG assessments in sectors ranging from hydrocarbons, FMCG, logistics, and infrastructure to agriculture and banking;
Integrity, network, and credibility reviews of international intermediaries in sectors from defence equipment to sub-sea cables and telecommunications;
Operational reviews of companies facing losses from industrial joint ventures in territory overtaken by terrorist organisations and sanctioned armed groups;
Ultimate Beneficial Owner reviews finding proxy ownership by old regime linked oil & gas and shipping businessmen providing financing and purchases of military equipment to separate sanctioned warring parties and laundering illicitly obtained wealth.
Recent political and security projects: sampling
More than 900 pages of topographical and tactically-focused raw source reports on core theatres of conflict at national, regional, and sub-regional levels in Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea, and Yemen — peace agreement and ceasefire monitoring, military, ruling party, armed groups, and ethnic conflict dynamics, boundary disputes, and geopolitics on dozens of contracts through multiple layers of civil and international armed conflict to build GIS and remote sensing imagery and context analysis for foreign ministries and track II mediators and telecommunications and industrial firms;
Similar extensive HUMINT and GIS-coordination based work for analysis to inform government policy making on criminal groups around smuggling, trafficking, and irregular migration from West Africa and the Sahel through the Maghreb to Europe;
Lecturing and pre-deployment briefings, including on sovereign debt issues for private creditors and financial institutions, senior United Nations humanitarian aid staff on geopolitics around civil conflict, regional water-sharing negotiations, and boundary disputes, China specialists on grassroots research related to PLA’s first overseas base and linkages between PLA theatre commands, and track II mediators to support peace negotiations in civil and international armed conflict.