Nnamdi Kalu Ezera is a Senior Counsel for the Commercial Law Development Program (CLDP) of the U.S. Department of Commerce Office of the General Counsel.  Mr. Ezera's areas of responsibility have included working with the Southern Africa Development Community on intellectual property rights legislation, the harmonization of commercial laws among the Francophone and Anglophone states of West Africa, the reform of intellectual property, procurement law, and project finance in Nigeria, and commercial law reform in Egypt. Currently, Mr. Ezera works with the countries of Southeast Europe.

 

Mr. Ezera worked with the Central and East European Law Initiative of the American Bar Association (CEELI) as Country Director responsible for designing, coordinating, and implementing programs which provided technical legal assistance to the emerging democracies of Central and Eastern Europe and the Newly Independent States of the former Soviet Union.  He has worked in the area of commercial law reform, initiating and shepherding the development of commercial law centers and participating in numerous commercial law training workshops.

 

As co-director of the American Bar Association African Law Initiative (AFLI), a nascent rule of law program designed to support legal reform and advance the rule of law in Africa, Mr. Ezera conducted in-country assessments of the South African legal education system and the Nigerian legal/judicial system.  Additionally, Mr. Ezera has worked and traveled extensively on the African continent as a journalist on comparative African politics.

 

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.