Uche Ezejiofor

Built in Africa, Owned by Who? Terra Industries and the Privatization of Nigeria's Defense

Afrikan Identity — Forthcoming 2026

Examines Terra Industries — celebrated as Africa's first homegrown defense technology company — against the backdrop of its Palantir Technologies backing, AFRICOM's drone agenda, and the Rubio State Department's framing of Nigeria. Argues that African agency in defense is not only about who builds the technology, but who owns it, who funds it, and whose strategic interests it ultimately serves.

On Leapfrogging: What Are We Leaping Over, and Where Are We Landing?

The Algorithmic Review — Pitch Accepted, Piece in Progress

Argues that leapfrogging and the privatization of public sectors limits the state's capacity to genuinely serve its citizens. When African countries leap over foundational governance infrastructure toward private tech solutions, they risk producing a generation of public servants who manage investor contracts rather than deliver services — a politically atrophied state dressed in the language of innovation.

Leveraging Web 3.0 to Accelerate Continental Integration and Digital Sovereignty

Executive Information Memo — Addressed to AU Commissioner for Infrastructure and Energy, December 2025

Proposes a phased Web 3.0 pilot for the African Union aligned with Agenda 2063, the AfCFTA, and the AU's 2020 Digital Transformation Strategy. Recommends blockchain-based governance tools — including decentralized digital identity and smart contracts for trade — as mechanisms to leapfrog legacy infrastructure while eradicating dependence on Western technology corporations. Addresses risks including digital exclusion, regulatory fragmentation, and privatization.

Imperial Architectures of the Law & the Limits of Human Rights in Nigeria

Research Paper — Obodo Nigeria Law Reform Research Lab, 2025 | Publication Forthcoming

Argues that Nigeria's constitutional and criminal legal frameworks simultaneously promise individual freedom while enabling state-sanctioned persecution of LGBTQ+ citizens through a colonial conception of public morality. Contends that the SSMPA and its enforcement reflect British colonial legal inheritance — not authentic African moral order — and that meaningful decolonization requires reorienting Nigerian jurisprudence around Ubuntu as an indigenous African human rights framework.

Mutual Lessons: What U.S. Benefits Delivery and African Digital Governance Can Learn From Each Other

Comparative Policy Brief — In Progress

A comparative policy analysis connecting U.S. public benefits delivery and African digital governance through the shared danger of infrastructure privatization. Draws on digital colonialism frameworks developed in prior research to argue that when profit motives and public need diverge, marginalized populations in both contexts bear the cost.

Digital Space Is The Place: Examining Dimensions of Global African Nation-Building in the Afropolitan Digital Platform

MA Thesis — Syracuse University, Forthcoming May 2026

Theorizes the Afropolitan Podcast as a digital nation-building project for the African diaspora. Using Gramscian cultural hegemony as a primary lens, the thesis examines how Afrobeats, continental touring economies, and African luxury fashion construct diasporic political identity and belonging in digital space.

Interrogating Black Radical Feminisms in the Context of the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election: Lessons from the Harris Campaign

Working Paper — Presented at Conference, 2025

A Black radical feminist analysis of Kamala Harris's 2024 presidential campaign and loss. Applies Joy James's concept of the captive maternal and Erica R. Edwards's imperial grammars of Blackness to Harris's DNC speech, arguing that her defeat reflects not individual failure but the structural limits of Black liberal feminism when confronting fascist politics from within institutional power.

The Relationship Between the Lack of Affordable Housing and a Healthy Learning Ecosystem for Youth in the South Shore Community Area

Community Research Report, 2024

Examined how housing instability in Chicago's South Shore neighborhood undermines educational outcomes for young people. Findings documented the compounding effects of displacement, inadequate housing infrastructure, and under-resourced schools on youth development, contributing to ongoing advocacy and policy conversations in the area.

Methodologies: Surveys, interviews, literature review, policy analysis, ArcGIS

Pan-Africanism in Praxis: Investigating the Biafran Secession and Its Lessons for Post-Colonial Statehood

Research Paper, 2023

Examined the Biafran secession as a case study in the tensions between Pan-African solidarity and postcolonial self-determination. Drawing on oral histories, archival materials, and social media analysis, the research surfaces enduring questions about sovereignty, ethnic nationalism, and the institutional limits of the African Union framework for mediating intra-continental conflict.

Methodologies: Oral history collection, archival research, social media analysis

A Study of How Race, College Education, Republican Party Identification, and Evangelical Christian Identification Impact a State's Usage of Capital Punishment

Research Paper, 2022

Used statistical analysis to examine the demographic and political predictors of capital punishment usage across U.S. states. Findings revealed significant correlations between racial composition, partisan identification, and rates of state-sanctioned execution, contributing to broader conversations about structural racism in the American criminal legal system.

Methodologies: SPSS, multivariate statistical analysis

How Non-Profits Professionalize Your Activism

Parachute Media, 2021

Examines the ways nonprofit institutional structures absorb, discipline, and professionalize grassroots activist energy — and what organizers lose in the translation.

Nzonzi

A research communications agency dedicated to amplifying scholarship from researchers of African descent. Nzonzi provides visibility infrastructure such as communications strategy, public-facing translation, and institutional outreach, so that African and diaspora knowledge reaches the public and private sectors it should be informing.

Learn more at Nzonzi.net