Abdoulaye Ndiaye
Delegate Africa Great Lakes Region, UNIREF (University for Refugees)
Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Commonwealth Studies
Born in South Africa in May 1950, Martin Plaut is currently Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Commonwealth Studies at the University of London. He received his first degree in Social Science from the University of Cape Town (1975) and an Honours degree in Industrial Relations from the University of the Witwatersrand (1977) before going on to do an MA at the University of Warwick (1978). He worked for a year as an Industrial Relations officer with Mobil Oil before joining the British Labour Party as Secretary on Africa and the Middle East in 1979. In 1984 he joined the BBC, working primarily on Africa, but also spending a year in India launching a television service in Hindi in 2007. He has reported from many parts of the continent but specialised in the Horn of Africa and Southern Africa. This involved travelling twice to Eritrea during its long war of independence, as well as reporting from South Africa during some of the clashes that led to the end of apartheid. During his time with the BBC he carried out investigative programmes on a range of issues, from the arms trade in the Democratic Republic of Congo to the diversion of aid during the Ethiopian famine of 1984-85. In 2011 he reported from the far North of the Democratic Republic of Congo on the attacks by the Lord’s Resistance Army and covered Sudan’s many crises on several occasions. He became Africa editor, BBC World Service News in 2003 and retired from the BBC in October 2013. He then joined the Institute of Commonwealth Studies as Senior Research Fellow. In April and May 2013 he was based at the University of Cape Town as Writer in Residence at the Centre for African Studies. Martin Plaut has advised the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, the US State Department and the European Parliament. For two years he was an Associate Fellow of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, leading their Africa research programme and continues to be an active member of Chatham House and the Royal African Society. He served as Vice-Chair of War on Want from 1984-85 and on the board of Justice Africa in 2013.
Books
Selected Articles