Judd Devermont Joins CSIS as Africa Program Director

July 31, 2018

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is pleased to announce Judd Devermont as the new director of its Africa program. Mr. Devermont will lead CSIS’s research and analysis on the major elements of U.S. policy toward Africa and the pressing issues facing the continent.

“We are delighted to have Judd join us here and build upon the excellent work our Africa program has come to be known for,” said John J. Hamre, CSIS president and CEO. “Under his leadership, the program is well placed to deliver smart approaches to the world’s youngest continent.”

From 2015 to 2018, Mr. Devermont was the national intelligence officer for Africa where he led the U.S. intelligence community’s analytic efforts on sub-Saharan African issues and served as the director of National Intelligence’s personal representative at interagency policy meetings.
 
From 2013 to 2015, he was the Central Intelligence Agency’s senior political analyst on sub-Saharan Africa. Mr. Devermont also served as the National Security Council’s director for Somalia, Nigeria, the Sahel, and the African Union from 2011 to 2013. In this position, he contributed to the U.S. Strategy Toward sub-Saharan Africa, signed by President Obama in 2012, and managed the process that resulted in U.S. recognition of Somali government for the first time since 1991.
 
Mr. Devermont spent two years abroad working at the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria from 2008 to 2010. He also has lived in South Africa and Cote d’Ivoire.

Mr. Devermont is a lecturer at George Washington University’s Elliot School of International Affairs where he co-teaches a class on U.S. intelligence analysis on sub-Saharan Africa. He has a master’s degree in African studies from Yale University and bachelor’s degree in history from the University of California, Los Angeles.