Alex Vines

Alex Vines is the Africa programme director at the European Council on Foreign Relations, based in the London office. Before joining ECFR, he was part of the executive leadership team at Chatham House as a research director for regions, and the inaugural director of its Africa programme from 2002 to 2025.

Vines chaired the UN Panel of Experts on the Ivory Coast from 2005 to 2007 and was a member of the UN Panel of Experts on Liberia from 2001 to 2003. He also served as a member of the Commonwealth Observer Group to Nigeria’s election in 2023 (also Mozambique in 2024 and 2019, and Ghana in 2016) and was a UN election officer in Mozambique (1994) and Angola (1992).

Vines worked at Human Rights Watch as a senior researcher on its Africa, Arms and Business and Human Rights programmes, and has served as a consultant for organisations including the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the Japan International Cooperation Authority, the UK’s former Department for International Development, the United States Agency for International Development, the Economic Community of West Africa States, and the EU. He has written expert reports for the EU parliament and has testified to law makers including for the US Congress and Senate, the EU parliament, the UK and Finnish parliaments, and the Angolan and Mozambican national assemblies.

Vines is an assistant professor at Coventry University and sits on the editorial and advisory boards of the South African Journal of International Affairs, Africa Review (journal of the African Studies Association of India), and the Journal of Southern African Studies. He also serves on the board of EG Justice—an NGO focused on Equatorial Guinea—and is on the advisory board of the John and Elnora Ferguson Centre for African Studies (JEFCAS) at the University of Bradford. He is an honorary fellow of the Lagos-based Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, and a senior associate fellow of the Africa programme at the Italian Institute for Political Studies (ISPI) in Milan.

Vines was awarded an OBE in 2008 in recognition of his Africa work. He holds a PhD from Coventry University.

A list of his research can be found here.