Mvemba Dizolele

Background and Education

Mvemba Phezo Dizolele is a writer, foreign policy analyst, and independent journalist. He is a former Peter J. Duignan Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is the author of the forthcoming biography: Mobutu: the Rise and Fall of the Leopard King (Random House UK).
His analyses have been published in the Journal of Democracy, New York Times, Newsweek International, International Herald Tribune, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, The New Republic, Forbes, St Louis Post-Dispatch and other outlets. A frequent commentator on African affairs, he has been a guest analyst on PBS'' NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, NPR''s Tell Me More, On Point and the Diane Rehm Show, the BBC World News Update, Al Jazeera’s The Stream, NewsHour and Inside Story, and the Voice of America.
 
Dizolele has testified before various subcommittees of the two chambers of the United States Congress.  He has also testified before the United Nations Security Council.
 
He was a grantee of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and covered the 2006 historic elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo. With the Pulitzer Center, he produced Congo’s Bloody Coltan, a documentary report on the relationship between the Congo conflict and the scramble for mineral resources. He served as an election monitor with the Carter Center in Congo in 2006 and 2011. He was also embedded with United Nations peacekeepers in Congo''s Ituri district and South Kivu province as a reporter.
He holds an International Master of Business Administration and a Master of Public Policy from the University of Chicago. He graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and French from Southern Utah University.
Dizolele is a veteran of the United States Marine Corps. He is fluent in French, Norwegian, Spanish, Swahili, Kikongo and Lingala, and is proficient in Danish and Swedish.