Nnamdi Kalu Ezera

Nnamdi Kalu Ezera is currently a Director for the Diaspora Africans in Trade and Investment (DATI) an initiative to engage the African diaspora to support the related priority goals of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) - to increase trade and investment both within Africa and between the U.S. and Africa.

Mr. Ezera is also a Coordinator for the Africa Women and Youth Empowerment Group (AWYEG). AWYEG provides coordinated capacity building support through international organization support for African women led organizations, and youth led organizations in order to empower them to more successfully engage in African trade and investment.

Mr. Ezera previously served as a Senior Counsel, Sub-Saharan Africa for the U.S. Department of Commerce Commercial Law Development Program (CLDP). Supervising a team of attorneys and international program specialists, Mr. Ezera was tasked with providing technical assistance and capacity building programs in the commercial law arena to the governments and regional economic communities, as well as private sectors across Africa, in order to improve trade and investment and thereby economic growth.

Mr. Ezera’s work encompassed a broad scope of commercial law reform issues and programs – including intellectual property, power/energy, procurement, judicial capacity, standards, SPS, trade remedies, ADR, investment and project finance. 

Prior to CLDP, Mr. Ezera worked with the Central and East European Law Initiative of the American Bar Association (CEELI) as Country Director responsible for designing and implementing programs which provided technical legal assistance to the emerging democracies of Central and Eastern Europe and the then Newly Independent States of the former Soviet Union. 

Mr. Ezera was born in Nigeria.  He received a Bachelor's degree in International Relations/Political Science from Johns Hopkins University and a Juris Doctor from the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley.  He is admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia.