George Ayittey

George Ayittey, a "visiting associate professor of economics" at American University, is the "founder and President of The Free Africa Foundation - a group dedicated to the promotion of development and democracy in the region," according to a biographical note on the website of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. 

Ayittey is a member of the African Oil Policy Initiative Group, a lobbying group set up to promote greater American extraction of African oil.

"In 1988, he accepted a National Fellowship at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University in California. He left Hoover in 1989 to join the Heritage Foundation as a Bradley Resident Scholar. In 1993, he started The Free Africa Foundation in Washington, DC, to serve as a catalyst for reform in Africa."

In 1999 George Ayittey was an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute.

"Dr. Ayittey has served as a consultant to several organizations, including the World Bank, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the International Council on Metals and the Environment (ICME)."

On July 24, 2005, Professor Ayittey, discussed social, political, and economic development in Africa with Anchor, Bill Moyers. see

In 2008 George Ayittey was a co-founder of Radio Free Africa.

Recently recognized by the prestigious Foreign Policy Magazine to be one of the world’s Top 100 Global Thinkers "for pushing policymakers to let Africa help itself." 


 * Associate Scholar, Foreign Policy Research Institute
 * Advisory Board, Initiative for Public Policy Analysis (Nigeria)

Published Works by George Ayittey
These include


 * Africa in Chaos (Chapter 1)
 * Indigenous African Institutions (Transnational Publishers, 1991)
 * The Blueprint for Ghana's Economic Recovery
 * Africa Betrayed (won the 1992 H. L. Mencken Award for Best Book). (Cato and St. Martins, 1992)
 * Africa Unchained: The Blueprint for Africa's Future (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004)

Related Sourcewatch

 * African Oil Policy Initiative Group
 * Chad/Cameroon Development Project
 * Oil industry
 * Ernest E. Uwazie