According to Jeffrey Smith, founding director of pro-democracy outfit Vanguard Africa, The Gambia remains in transition. He told Africanews: “While The Gambia was not mired in social conflict in a traditional sense, nor was it afflicted by civil war, the country of today – three years into a profoundly complicated democratic transition – resembles that of a post-conflict society.

“It is a society collectively grappling, and still coming to terms, with their collective and individual traumas induced by Jammeh’s autocratic rule. In this way, the country very much remains in a tenuous transition.”

He is the world’s longest serving president, whose family has been accused of squandering his nation’s oil wealth on jets and sports cars as its people struggle in poverty. Now, as Equatorial Guinea faces ruin after years of mismanagement and alleged corruption,  President Obiang could be forced to come clean on the full extent of his regime’s plundering over 40 years.

Uganda, under Museveni's rule, has a long history of repression. But the "brazen crackdown on human rights has clearly escalated in recent months," said Jeffrey Smith, the founding director of Vanguard Africa, a nonprofit organization that supports fair elections in Africa. "The abuse of citizens and the targeting of dissent in Uganda is worse at this time because the Museveni regime is paranoid and it's clear that his support is waning"

Slashing access to the world’s biggest market is meant to send President Paul Biya “a strong disapproving message,” said Jeffrey Smith, founding director of Vanguard Africa, an ethical-leadership nonprofit organization.

Jeffrey Smith, the director of Vanguard Africa, said that he viewed the Nobel Prize as “encouraging Prime Minister Ahmed and the new regime in Ethiopia as much if not more than it is about the progress already made.”

“He’s a genuinely curious person who wants to learn,” says Jeffrey Smith, founding director of Vanguard Africa, an NGO promoting democracy in Africa, who has hosted Mr. Wine in Washington. “I was skeptical about him; I expected another brash guy who was all talk, but in fact he was here to listen and learn.” While some young African populist political stars, such as Julius Malema in South Africa, have been accused of playing on divisions and fear, “Bobi Wine is all about bringing disparate voices to the table,” Mr. Smith says.

An award given by Harvard University's Global Health Catalyst program to Zimbabwe’s First Lady Auxillia Mnangagwa was revoked after a letter, spearheaded by pro-democracy group Vanguard Africa, was signed by 16 top diplomats and civil society leaders, including the last four U.S. ambassadors to ZImbabwe.

Jeffrey Smith, the founding director of Vanguard Africa, and who spearheaded the sign-on letter to Harvard said: “Academic institutions in the U.S. are routinely used by anti-democratic, wholly authoritarian regimes abroad to ivory wash their otherwise horrendous records on human rights and governance, including in domestic propaganda, which was the case here in Zimbabwe. This is an issue that needs more attention, and one that institutions, like Harvard, should be more mindful of moving forward.”

“This outcome unequivocally demonstrates the power of public advocacy, as well as the power of standing on principle and doing the right thing,” Jeffrey Smith, the founder and director of pro-democracy group Vanguard Africa told BuzzFeed News in a WhatsApp message. “While this honor should never have been given to the First Lady of Zimbabwe, the right decision to rescind it was ultimately made.”

“Oftentimes, abusive, wholly repressive regimes like the kind that exists in Zimbabwe will attempt to use these prestigious, international institutions, such as Harvard, to put a positive veneer on what is happening in the country, to deflect from human rights abuses, the massive shortfalls in medicine,” Jeffrey Smith told RFI. Smith, who spearheaded the open letter, is the founding director of Washington DC-based Vanguard Africa an organisation that advocates ethical leadership on the African continent."