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An award given by Harvard University's Global Health Catalyst program to Zimbabwe’s First Lady Auxillia Mnangagwa was revoked after a letter, spearheaded by pro-democracy group Vanguard Africa, was signed by 16 top diplomats and civil society leaders, including the last four U.S.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

Jeffrey Smith, founding director of Vanguard Africa, a D.C.-based group that has worked with human rights activists in Zimbabwe, said: “The life of Robert Mugabe was the tragic tale of a freedom fighter turned tyrant — a man wholly corrupted by the power granted to him and unrepentant for the violence he inflicted on generations of Zimbabweans who yearned for nothing more than their basic rights and dignity,” Smith told the Blade. “A thorough devastation that undoubtedly set the country back for generations.”

When you think of “heists,” a few things probably come to mind. Precious artwork, stolen off the wall of a museum after an elaborate scheme to bypass the laser security system. Ocean’s 11 hitting a Las Vegas Casino—and getting away with it. Or maybe a getaway car and masked bank robbers. But governments commit heists, too, and they are not just wild and weird; they also often get away with it. In this episode, we look at three different heists related to governments. The first, the North Korean bank heist, involves an audacious attempt to steal a billion dollars from the Bangladesh Central Bank without anyone noticing. The second, a heist carried out by former Gambian dictator Yahya Jammeh, involved the looting of nearly a billion dollars during his twenty-two years in power. Over that period, he pledged to rule for a billion years, announced that he had found a cure for HIV/AIDS involving peanuts, bananas, and condensed milk, and had an obsession with mayonnaise. And the third and final heist is called the Blue Diamond Affair, a stranger-than-fiction tale of a Thai gardener, a vacuum cleaner bag, Saudi jewels, murder, kidnapping, and an unsolved mystery that continues to sour diplomatic relations between Thailand and Saudi Arabia.

“Over the past several years, there has been a hugely significant increase in the number of U.S. lobbyists representing foreign nationals, many of them connected to the Trump administration,” said Jeffrey Smith, the executive director of Vanguard Africa, which supports democracy movements in the region. “Many of Trump’s fundraisers and supporters have struck it rich in this sector, often working on behalf of the world’s worst human rights abusers,” said Smith, who has done work on behalf of Cameroonian opposition figures. He cited Zimbabwe, which hired the Trump-linked lobbying group Ballard Partners in a bid to scrap long-standing U.S. sanctions, as well as Clout’s work for Cameroon.

“In Washington, this sort of access to Trump, whether perceived or real, is a hugely lucrative endeavor,” Smith said. It’s difficult to say how such lobbying efforts have yielded results yet in Zimbabwe’s case, as it is still under U.S. sanctions.