The Future of African Security: Perspective on Critical Issues

On Tuesday, October 17, the Alexander Hamilton Society at UT-Austin, the Clements Center for National Security and the Strauss Center for International Security and Law, hosted Ambassador (Ret.) Larry E. André Jr., former American diplomat and career member of the Senior Foreign Service and Dr. Joshua Busby, Professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and Clements Center Faculty Fellow, for a conversation on “The Future of African Security: Perspective on Critical Issues.”

Ambassador (Ret.) Larry E. André, Jr., retired from the State Department’s Senior Foreign Service in May 2023 after a 37-year career with the federal government (3 ½ years with Peace Corps, first as a volunteer for two years then as a staff member, then 33 ½ years with the State Department’s Foreign Service). He served in a mix of leadership, policy, and management positions.  

Ambassador (Ret.) André’s leadership positions included Ambassador to Somalia (January 2022-May 2023), Ambassador to Djibouti (January 2018-January 2021), and Ambassador to Mauritania (September 2014-November 2017). He also served as Chargé d’Affaires, U.S. Embassy South Sudan; Deputy Chief of Mission, U.S. Embassy Tanzania; Deputy Chief of Mission, U.S. Embassy Sierra Leone; Director, Office of the Presidential Special Envoy for Sudan and South Sudan, and Deputy Director, Office of West African Affairs.

Ambassador (Ret.) André’s management (“overseas operations”) positions included Deputy Director, African Affairs Bureau’s Executive Office; Management Officer, U.S. Embassy Guinea; Administrative Officer, U.S. Consulate Kaduna (northern Nigeria); Deputy Management Counselor, U.S. Embassy Iraq; and Supervisory General Services Officer, U.S. Embassy Bangladesh.

Ambassador (Ret.) André’s policy positions (advocacy, diplomatic reporting and programs) included Political Counselor, U.S. Embassy Kenya; Political/Consular Officer, U.S. Embassy Cameroon, Economic/Commercial officer, U.S. Embassy Bangladesh, and Regional Environment Officer for East Africa covering 14 countries from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.  

Prior to joining the Foreign Service, Ambassador (Ret.) André worked in Chad to assist refugees returning home following the war with Libya, and served both as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Senegal and as Peace Corps staff in Washington, DC. As an undergraduate, he was a researcher at the Rose Institute of State and Local Government in Claremont, California. He speaks French. He, his wife Ouroukou, and their son Isidore reside in Caldwell County, Texas. He has Cal-Tex roots, growing up initially in California and then relocating to Fort Worth, Texas in the 8th grade.

Joshua Busby is an Associate Professor of Public Affairs and a fellow in the RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service as well as a Distinguished Scholar at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law. He originally joined the LBJ School faculty in fall 2006 as a Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer. Prior to coming to UT, Dr. Busby was a research fellow at the Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School (2005-2006), the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s JFK School (2004-2005), and the Foreign Policy Studies program at the Brookings Institution (2003-2004). He defended his dissertation with distinction in summer 2004 from Georgetown University, where he also earned his M.A. in 2002.

His first book entitled Moral Movements and Foreign Policy was published by Cambridge University Press in July 2010. In his book, Busby seeks to explain why some countries are willing to take on new international commitments championed by principled advocacy groups and others are not. Substantively, he explores the politics of climate change, developing country debt relief, HIV/AIDS, and the International Criminal Court in selected country cases in the advanced industrialized world. His second book with Ethan Kapstein, AIDS Drugs for All: Social Movements and Market Transformations was also published by Cambridge University Press in September 2013. That book seeks to understand the conditions under which movements can transform markets, with lessons learned from the global AIDS treatment advocacy campaign.

Busby is the author of several studies on climate change, national security, and energy policy from the Council on Foreign Relations, the Brookings Institution, the German Marshall Fund, and the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). Busby is one of the lead researchers in the Strauss Center project on Climate Change and African Political Stability (CCAPS), a $7.6 million grant funded by the U.S. Department of Defense. He has also written on U.S.-China relations on climate change for CNAS and Resources for the Future.

Busby is a Life Member in the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. His works have appeared in International Security, International Studies Quarterly, Perspectives on Politics, Security Studies, among other publications. Busby served in the Peace Corps in Ecuador (1997-1999), worked in Nicaragua (Summer 1994, Spring 1996), and consulted for the Inter-American Development Bank (2000). Prior to working with the Peace Corps, he was a Marshall Scholar at the University of East Anglia (Norwich, England), where he completed a second B.A. (with Honors) in Development Studies (1993-1995). He completed his first B.A. (with Highest Distinction) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Political Science and Biology.