Fonteh Akum is the executive director of the ISS. He is the former head of the Lake Chad Basin programme in the Dakar office. He joined the ISS in 2017 as a senior researcher in the Peace and Security Research Programme in Pretoria, after which he moved to ISS Dakar as a senior researcher. Before joining the ISS he worked for the United States Department of Defense, the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa, and the Africa Program of the United Nations University for Peace. Fonteh’s research covers violence, governance and human security in the Lake Chad Basin. He has a PhD in politics and international studies from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.

Mark Shaw is the Executive Director of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.

He was previously the National Research Foundation Professor of Justice and Security at the University of Cape Town, Department of Criminology. Mark worked for ten years at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), including as Inter-regional Advisor, Chief of the Criminal Justice Reform Unit and with the Global Programme against Transnational Organised Crime, with extensive field work. Before joining the UN, Mark held a number of positions in the South African government and civil society where he worked on issues of public safety and urban violence in the post-apartheid transition.

He holds a PhD from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg and has published widely on organised crime, security and justice reform issues.

Eric Pelser is Head of the ENACT programme on transnational organised crime. Over the past 25 years, Eric has worked in government, the non-governmental and corporate sectors in a number of African countries. He has extensive experience in the public safety and development field, in the areas of programme management, design, evaluation and research. Eric has published on policing, criminal justice and crime prevention and has a Master’s degree in public and development management from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.

Tuesday Reitano is Managing Director at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime and a senior research advisor at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, where she leads the ENACT programme on behalf of the GI-TOC.

Saïbou Issa is an academic and historian specialising in international and strategic stuides. His work focuses on the dynamics of conflict, security and peacebuilding in the Lake Chad Basin and Central Africa. In addition to teaching, university administration and supervising dozens of doctoral students on strategic issues, he has authored several publications and reports, including consultations for most of the international and regional actors involved in combating current threats and building development and integration in the regions mentioned above. He joined ISS in April 2025 as a senior researcher and co-director of the Observatory on Transnational Organised Crime and Violence in Central Africa.

Nathalia Dukhan is a senior researcher and conflict analyst on Central Africa. Over the past 15 years, her research focused on the economic and financial drivers of mass violence, and the responsibility of corporate groups, local and foreign mercenaries, mafia groups and private security companies in the context of the deepening geostrategic power struggle between foreign powers on the African continent. She has many years of experience working closely with civil society organizations dedicated to combatting organized crime.