Africa Action Staff and Board of Directors
This page contains details on the staff and Board of Directors of Africa
Action. For further information, please contact the Washington, DC office
at the address at the bottom of this page.
Africa Action Staff
Gerald LeMelle
Executive
Director
Gerald LeMelle is the Executive Director of Africa Action.
Africa Action is the oldest organization in the United States whose mission
is to change U.S. Africa relations to promote political, economic and
social justice in Africa. Africa Action is widely recognized for more
than five decades of solidarity with African human rights and justice
advocates across the continent. It has been singled out for praise by
Africa leaders from Kwame Nkrumah and Leopold Senghor to Julius Nyerere
and Nelson Mandela.
Africa Action's predecessor organizations date back to 1953, when the
American Committee on Africa (ACOA) was founded in New York. The ACOA
was created by a group of black and white civil rights activists who had
organized support for the historic Defiance Campaign in South Africa the
previous year. The ACOA, together with The Africa Fund, which was founded
in 1966, and the Africa Policy Information Center (APIC) founded in 1978,
merged to form Africa Action in 2001.
Africa Action, working with civil society partners in Africa:
• provides information and analysis of key human rights issues
in Africa.
• mobilizes public pressure to change
the policies of the U.S. and multilateral institutions toward Africa,
so that they support the efforts of Africans themselves to promote human
rights, democracy and development.
Prior to joining Africa Action in the fall of 2007, Gerald served
as the Deputy Executive Director for Advocacy at Amnesty International
USA. For over twelve years, Gerald was responsible for the following programs:
Business and Human Rights, National Campaigns, Casework, Country Specialists,
the Domestic Human Rights Program, Government Relations, International
Justice and Accountability, Just Earth!, OUTfront, the Program to Abolish
the Death Penalty, Refugee Program, Urgent Actions, and the Women's Human
Rights. Under his supervision the Advocacy Department produced over 1600
actions a year.
Before working at Amnesty International USA, Gerald served as the Director
of African Affairs with the Phelps-Strokes Fund. There,
he was responsible for seven programs including the African Student Advisory
Program, the African Student Aid Fund, the African University Resources
Program, the African Forum Series, the African Papers Series, the International
Studies Curriculum Project and the Southern African Refugee Scholarship
Program.
Gerald holds a J.D. from Georgetown
University. He is a member of the New York, District of Columbia, and
Supreme Court Bar Associations, and a member of the Council for Foreign
Relations. He lived in Africa
for ten years, primarily in Kenya and Tunisia.
Gerald has appeared numerous times on national television and radio outlets including CNN, C-SPAN, Al Jazeera, VOA, CBC, NPR and Pacifica. His commentary has been featured by newspapers across the United States, such as the New York Times, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Christian Science Monitor.
Briggs Bomba
Associate Director for Campaigns
Briggs Bomba joined the staff of Africa Action in the fall of 2007. He holds a Master’s Degree in Social and Applied Economics from Wright State University.
Briggs has extensive experience working with civil society organizations in Zimbabwe and other African countries, having served on the Management Committees of the Zimbabwe Social Forum and the Southern Africa Social Forum until 2006. He has traveled extensively on the African continent and internationally, including to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, Rwanda, Kenya, Lesotho, and the United Kingdom among other places in Africa and Europe.
Briggs is a frequent guest on broadcast media including BBC, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, CBC, Press TV, Al Jazeera, VOA, SW Radio Africa, KPFA and WPFW. He has been a guest on Reverend Jesse Jackson’s Keeping Hope Alive radio show. His commentary has appeared in Foreign Policy In Focus, The Black Commentator, and Pambazuka News, among other outlets.
Briggs’s past positions include Student Representative Council President in Zimbabwe, President of the African Students Union at Wright State University in Dayton Ohio, Chairperson of the Zimbabwe Social Forum Youth Council, and National Coordinator of Students Against Privatization in Zimbabwe.
Prior to joining Africa Action, Briggs was the point person for the American Friends Service Committee’s "Life over Debt" campaign in Dayton, Ohio, advocating total debt cancellation for Africa. Before that, Briggs spent a year at the Center for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Briggs serves on the Coordinating Committee (board) of Jubilee USA Network.
Michael Swigert
Associate Director for Policy and Communications
Michael joined the staff of Africa Action in 2007. He currently coordinates Africa Action’s press relations and new media work. Vulture funds and the relationship between the crisis in Darfur and Sudan’s other conflicts are among the present focuses of his research and analysis.
Michael’s commentary on U.S. foreign policy toward Africa has been featured extensively by broadcast, online and print media. He has appeared on XM/Sirius Radio, Radio France International, Free Speech Radio News, VOA-Radio, ORF (Austrian Broadcasting), KPFK Los Angeles, and numerous local radio stations. He has been quoted by Inter Press Service, the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, the Pan African News Agency, Now Magazine, the Scripps Howard Foundation Wire, Allafrica.com and Political Affairs Magazine. Michael is a contributor to Foreign Policy in Focus.
Michael holds a B.A. in Political Science from Tufts University, where he was active in the Experimental College and the Institute for Global Leadership. U.S. foreign policy, African affairs and international development were among the focuses of his studies. At Tufts, he developed a passion for global social justice through student activism on issues including human trafficking, child soldiers, and immigrant rights. Michael spent the summer of 2005 as a volunteer teacher in Ho, Ghana.
Christine
Winfield
Office Administrator, Operations Director
Christine joined the staff of Africa Action in 2007. She has over ten
years of administrative and operations experience with various organizations
in the Washington, D.C. area. She has a proven track record of reliability,
confidentiality, efficiency, responsiveness and loyalty, which are requirements
to meet needs in operations management, employee relations, compensation
and benefits administration, performance management and compliance. She
has traveled to Nigeria and numerous countries in Europe and Central America.
Christine is a long-time, passionate volunteer and activist for various
organizations including those that benefit people living with HIV/AIDS,
children's charities, cruelty to animals and the environment.
Africa
Action Board of Directors
Emira
Woods, Board Chair
Emira Woods is co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF), a "Think
Tank Without Walls." She holds a BA in International Relations from
Columbia, a certificate in Public Policy from the Woodrow Wilson School
at Princeton, a Master's in Government from Harvard, and is ABD in Political
Economy and Government at Harvard. She recently was Program Manager for
the Committee on Development Policy and Practice at InterAction, serving
as a principal staff contact for advocacy at the UN, and the international
financial institutions, USAID and the Department of the Treasury. She
designed and implemented a strategic campaign around the Monterrey Financing
for Development conference, working with both InterAction members and
a broader coalition of Southern and Northern agencies. Prior to this position,
she served as Program Officer of Oxfam America's Africa program, which
involved outreach to the heads of major international institutions and
grassroots groups in the most remote communities.
Mark Toney,
Vice-Chair
Mark was
the Executive Director of the Center for Third World Organizing (CTWO)
in Oakland, California from 1999 to 2003. He initiated a major
realignment of CTWO organizing, training and communication resources to
focus on advancing racial justice through a unified campaign GROWL (Grass
Roots Organizing for Welfare Liberation). From 1996-1999 Mark worked
as Senior Research Associate for the Applied Research Center in Oakland,
CA. Previously, Mark founded Direct Action for Rights and Equality
(DARE) in Providence, Rhode Island, working on such issues as benefits
for home daycare providers, parent involvement in bilingual education,
and preventing utility shut-offs in the winter for low-income families.
He was the Executive Director/Chief Organizer at DARE from 1986-1994.
From 1982 to 1985 Mark worked as the Lead Organizer with Workers
Association for Guaranteed Employment, a welfare rights organization based
in Providence. Mark is a Doctoral candidate in Sociology at the
University of California in Berkeley. He is a Kellogg National
Leadership Fellow and his leadership accomplishments have been featured
in Mother Jones, and Brown Alumni Monthly.
Joe Volk,
Secretary
Joe Volk is the Executive Secretary for the Friends Committee on National
Legislation (FCNL) a Quaker lobby in the public interest that was established
in 1943 in Washington, DC. Coming to FCNL from the American Friends Service
Committee (AFSC), Philadelphia, in April 1990, he is the third Executive
Secretary in FCNL's 56 year history. FCNL, closely related to the Religious
Society of Friends (Quakers), is the oldest registered national religious
lobby in the United States. He serves on the Steering Committee of the
U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines. Volk is a Vietnam-era veteran. He
refused deferments to teach, declined an offer of Conscientious Objector
status, was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1967, refused to go with his
mechanized cavalry unit to Vietnam in 1968, and, although a court martial
found him guilty of being AWOL, he served only a brief sentence in the
stockade at Fort Carson, CO. He was honorably discharged in 1969.
John Riggan,
Treasurer
John Riggan was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the TCC
Group until January 2006, when he stepped down after a decade in this
leadership position. He had been with TCC Group for 26 years, and had
originally been one of its founders in the early 1980s. Prior to this,
Riggan served as Special Consultant to the Ford Foundation on low-income
and human services issues. In this capacity, he created a multi-state,
welfare-to-work demonstration project, and headed a team of consultants
to assist the governor and legislature in developing the Wisconsin Youth
Initiative. Prior to that, he served the City of Philadelphia as its Drug
and Alcohol Abuse Administrator and as Special Assistant to the Managing
Director for Human Services Coordination. Riggan currently serves on numerous
boards, including Oxfam America, where he also is convener of the Africa
Working Group. He is a Board Member and past President of Philadelphia
Citizens for Children and Youth and a Trustee of The Free Library of Philadelphia.
A graduate of the University of Washington, he has additional training
in public administration, economic development, organization and management.
He spent more than seven years in Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer, development
specialist and Country Director in Chad.
Mobolaji E. Aluko,
Ph.D.
Dr. Aluko is professor of Chemical Engineering at Howard University,
Washington DC. Tenured as an associate professor in 1988, he became a
full professor in 1994, whereupon he also became Chair of the department,
a position that he currently holds. In addition to being Chair, he has
held several administrative and research positions at Howard University.
His broad research interests include chemical reaction engineering analysis,
information, communications and computer technology applications in engineering,
as well as engineering education pedagogy. He received a US patent in
coal research in December 2000. Dr. Aluko is president of the Nigerian
Democratic Movement (NDM), a US-based pro-democracy movement as well as
the US Representative of the United Democratic Front of Nigeria (UDFN),
an umbrella pro-democracy movement organization also based in the US.
He is a frequent commentator on Nigerian and African affairs.
Jim
Winkler
Jim Winkler is the General Secretary of the General Board of
Church & Society (GBCS), the international public policy and social
justice agency of the 11-million member United Methodist Church.
He heads up a wide-ranging ministry of global peace and justice with offices
in Washington, D.C. and New York City. Mr. Winkler speaks widely across
the United Methodist Church and has led delegations to the Middle East,
Iraq, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Germany seeking peaceful solutions
to global conflict. He has preached and led workshops and training events
in Russia, Nigeria, and the Philippines, and is a frequent spokesperson
for the justice work of The United Methodist Church to the national and
international media. He is a member of the Justice and Advocacy Commission
of the National Council of Churches of the United States of America, a
member of the steering committee of the Campaign for a National Health
Plan, board member of the Faith and Politics Institute, and board member
of the Churches for the Middle East Peace.
Njoki
Njoroge Njehu
Njoki is the Director of Solidarity Africa Network in Action
and the Daughters of Mumbi Resource Center in Kenya. Prior to this, Njoki
was the Director of the 50 Years is Enough Network in Washington, DC for
7 years. Njoki is a Kenyan national who worked with women's groups and
the Greenbelt Movement in Kenya for over a decade. She grew up learning
from the work of Kenyan women, especially her mother, Lilian Njehû,
a grassroots and community activist. Before joining the 50 Years Is Enough
Network, she worked at Greenpeace International for three years focusing
on the international toxic trade and on biodiversity and oceans issues.
Njoki has testified before the U.S. Congress on African debt; the IMF's
Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF) which until 1999 administered
the IMF/World Bank structural adjustment programs; and on the role of
the African Development Bank in addressing, debt, HIV/AIDs and other crises
facing Africa. She serves on the board of the Quixote Center and Jobs
with Justice. She also serves on the coordinating committee of the Grassroots
Global Justice (GGJ) coalition which organized and facilitated the participation
of U.S. community-based, people of color, youth, and grassroots organizations
in the World Social Forum (2002 & 2003) in Porto Alegre, Brazil and
in Mumbai (Bombay), India in 2004. She is a founding member of the International
Coordinating Council of the World Social Forum and the Africa Social Forum.
Sonia
Sanchez
Sonia Sanchez was born in Birmingham, Alabama. Sanchez
attended public schools in New York City and then Hunter College, where
she received a B.A. in 1955. Sanchez became an important voice
in the revolutionary social movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Her first
two collections of poetry, Home Coming (1969) and We a BaddDDD
People (1970), reflect her militant stance, inspired in part by
the example of Malcolm X. Sanchez unleashed some of her rage at America's
Anglocentric educational system. Her criticisms, however, were followed
by suggestions, and she has become a powerful advocate of black studies
programs. Sanchez began a long teaching career in 1965 at the Downtown
Community School in New York. After stints at several universities, including
San Francisco State College, the University of Pittsburgh, Rutgers, Amherst,
and the University of Pennsylvannia, she joined the staff of Temple University
in Philadelphia in 1977, where she is currently a professor in the departments
of English and women's studies. Her anthology, Three Hundred and Sixty
Degrees of Blackness Comin at You (1972), collects poetry written
by her students in a creative writing class in Harlem. Sanchez
has written several plays and has also done considerable writing for children.
Sanchez's later poetry volumes are more specifically feminist in
orientation, treating Sanchez's personal growth while celebrating women
in general. One of her most celebrated volumes is Homegirls &
Handgrenades (1984), a collection of autobiographical prose poems.
The volume received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation.
Sanchez continues to teach and write in Philadelphia.
Ayesha
Imam
Dr. Ayesha Imam has lectured and carried out research in women's
studies and gender analysis at universities and research institutes in
Nigeria, the U.K., Canada and Senegal. She has published widely
for both academic and activist uses. Her formal publications include
Engendering African Social Sciences (CODESRIA 1994, also published in
French 2002) and two special issues of Africa Development, Re-Visiting
Gender I and II, as well as numerous journal articles. She was the
initiator and co-director of the first Gender Institute in Africa, initiated
by CODESRIA in 1994 and held annually since, which brings together young
researchers from across the continent and introduces them to gender critiques,
methodology and research. Simultaneously, Ayesha Imam is a woman's human
rights and democratic development activist. She is founding director
of BAOBAB for Women's Human Rights in Nigeria, which undertakes research,
advocacy and education to protect and develop women's legal rights issues
under customary, secular and religious laws. With BAOBAB, Dr. Imam
was the 2002 recipient of the John Humphrey Human Rights Award for the
work in protecting women's rights under the new Sharia Penal Codes in
Nigeria, which have been drafted and implemented in a retrogressive and
discriminatory fashion. Ayesha Imam is a core group member of the
international solidarity network, Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML),
and coordinated research in 8 countries in Africa and the Middle East
on the ways in which different systems of laws and social practices combine
to structure women's lives in Muslim countries and communities. Dr. Imam
has also worked on gender training, evaluation and research for activists
in NGOs, for mid-level planners and functionaries in government, and for
researchers. She is also the current chair of the Africa Democracy
Forum, a network of African democracy activists which works on mutual
solidarity, information and skills exchange across the continent.
Makani Themba-Nixon
Makani Themba-Nixon is Executive Director of The Praxis Project,
a non-profit organization working on issues of health justice.
Her current projects include media assistance and training for activist
organizations as well as work on local policy development to address public
health and other social issues. Makani has published numerous articles
and case studies on media and public policy advocacy. She is co-author
of Media Advocacy and Public Health: Power for Prevention.
Her latest book is making Policy, Making Change available from Jossey-Bass.
Makani has extensive background and experience in the field of
non-profit management and community development. She is a highly
experienced and sought-after speaker in the area of media and policy advocacy.
She has extensive expertise in developing policy concerning public
health and community development with special emphasis on innovative local
policy.
Congresswoman
Barbara Lee
Barbara Lee was first elected to the House of Representatives for the
Ninth District of California in a 1998 special election to fill the seat
of retiring Congressman Ron Dellums. She is currently the Co-Chair of
the Progressive Caucus, Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC)
Task Force on Global HIV/AIDS, Whip for the CBC and a member of the CBC
Minority Business Task Force. Congresswoman Lee came to Washington after
serving in the California State Assembly from 1990-1996 and the California
State Senate from 1996 – 1998. Throughout her political career,
Barbara Lee has sought to bring her training as a social worker to bear
on the problems and challenges that confront the East Bay, California,
and the nation. She has worked to build bipartisan coalitions to provide
for the basic and inter-related needs of Americans: health care, housing,
education, jobs and the quest to create livable communities in a peaceful
world. In order to meet these needs, Congresswoman Lee believes that Americans
and their representatives must begin by reordering our priorities and
redefining national security for the post-Cold War world: a bloated defense
budget undermines rather than enhances our real national security. In
Congress, Barbara Lee is carrying on a long tradition in the Ninth District
of representing the voice of reason and compassion in the fight to reshape
the national budget.
Rev.
Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker, President Emeritus
Senior Pastor, Canaan Baptist Church, Harlem, NY; former Executive Director
for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Wyatt Tee Walker
is Senior Pastor of the Canaan Baptist Church of Christ in Harlem, New
York. Dr. Walker holds an earned doctorate in African- American Studies
with a specialization in Music. He is among the foremost authorities on
the music of the African- American religious experience. Dr. Walker is
the author of twenty-one books Including Common Thieves; The Harvard Paper;
Afrocentrism and Christian Faith; Soweto Diary; Race, Justice and Culture
and his newest work, Millennium End Papers. Wyatt Tee Walker's career
history includes serving as Chief of staff to Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr., Pulpit Minister, Abyssinian Baptist church and Special Assistant
to Governor Nelson Rockefeller. He has been the Senior Pastor and CEO
of the Canaan Baptist Church since 1967. In the 1999-2000 academic year,
this Harlem pastor served as Interim Dean of Doctoral Studies at United
Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio. In the 1993 Ebony Magazine poll,
he was named one of the fifteen greatest African-American preachers in
the nation. Wyatt Tee Walker was the co-founder, along with Canon
Frederick B. Williams, of the Religious Action Network (RAN) of the American
Committee on Africa in 1988 during the height of the Anti-Apartheid struggle.
RAN is a network of over 300 congregations throughout the U.S.
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Staff & Board
