Dr. Kamal-Deen Ali (Capt Navy Rtd)

Executive Director, Centre for Maritime Law and Security Africa

Dr. Kamal-Deen Ali (Capt Navy Rtd) is the Executive Director of the Centre for Maritime Law and Security Africa. He was previously the Director of Legal Affairs of the Ghana Navy and the Director of Research of the Ghana Armed Forces Command and Staff College. He has since 2003 been engaged in ocean governance capacity building and maritime security policy shaping at the national, regional and global levels. He has participated in several global initiatives, regularly providing expert input/support to the activities of international partners in the sub-region, including the Interregional Coordination Centre (ICC), the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the Abidjan Convention Secretariat and the UN Economic Commission on Africa (UNECA). He served as a technical expert to the Global High-Panel on Sustainable Ocean Economy and co-authored Blue Paper 16 (2020) – “Transnational Organized Crime in the Fisheries Sector,” which is part of a series of high level policy papers commissioned by the Panel.
He holds a PhD in Law, Master of Laws and Master of Arts in International Relations. He is a Fellow of the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security and an Associate of both the Corbett Centre for Maritime Policy, United Kingdom, and the Africa Security Sector Network (ASSN). He has published extensively and his book “Maritime Security Cooperation in the Gulf of Guinea: Prospects and Challenges" (Brill/Martinus Nijhoff 2015) is rated as a cutting-edge contribution to knowledge and research in maritime studies.