IIR Welcomes New Think Visegrad Fellow Darlington Tshuma

Darlington Tshuma is a Senior Fellow – Africa in the ‘Mediterranean, Middle East and Africa’ programme at the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) in Rome, Italy. Previously, he served as an Advisor, seconded by the World Food Programme, to the UN Under-Secretary-General and Special Adviser on Africa at the United Nations Secretariat in New York from 2024 to 2025.

Between 2025 and 2026, he was an ARUA–Carnegie New York / Mastercard Foundation Early Career Research Fellow at the Institute for Peace and Security Studies (IPSS) at Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. He previously held postdoctoral fellowships at the Thabo Mbeki African School of Public and International Affairs and Wits University in South Africa. In 2021, he was an inaugural Africa Policy Fellow at the Florence School of Transnational Governance at the European University Institute in Florence.

His research spans various aspects of governance in Africa, including colonial encounters and international humanitarian law, Europe–Africa relations, and migration and human rights, democracy, gender, human security, African development, African nationalism, leadership and contemporary African politics.

His work has been featured in several prominent media outlets and platforms, including the UN’s Africa Renewal, South Africa’s Mail & Guardian and Daily Maverick, AffarInternazionali, Africa at LSE and The Conversation Africa. He is also a recipient of several research grants and fellowships, including Inherit at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, the Think Visegrad Fellowship at the Institute of International Relations Prague, the ARUA–Carnegie New York / Mastercard Foundation Early Career Research Fellowship, the Africa Policy Fellowship, the Canon Collins PhD Scholarship and the Young African Leaders Programme.

If you are interested in Darlington Tshuma’s work and would like to meet him in person, join us at the IIR on 17 September, where he will present his policy paper The Making of a Visegrad–Africa Strategy: From Fragmented to Strategic Engagement? and discuss the future of V4–Africa relations and the prospects for a more coherent and strategic partnership.

Think Visegrad – V4 Think Tank Platform is a network for structured dialogue on issues of strategic regional importance. The network analyses key issues for the Visegrad Group (V4) and provides recommendations to the governments of V4 countries, the annual presidencies of the group and the International Visegrad Fund.