Heiko Nitzschke serves as Germany’s Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa since August 2023, based in Nairobi, Kenya. From 2019-23 he was Minister Counsellor and Deputy Head of Mission at the German Embassy in Addis Ababa. From 2015-19 he worked in the Policy Planning Unit at the German Foreign Office, responsible inter alia for Africa, multilateral order and relations with Think Tanks. Previously, he was a member of the Security Council team at the German UN Mission in New York covering Syria, Libya, Yemen, peacekeeping and peacebuilding, and Security Council reform (2011-15). From 2009-11, he served as Deputy Head of Mission at the German Embassy in Sudan, and as Political Affairs Officer with the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) from 2008-09. He was Desk Officer for UN Peacekeeping at the Foreign Office in Berlin from 2005-2008. He joined the Federal Foreign Office as career diplomat in 2004. Before that, he was senior program officer at the International Peace Academy (now International Peace Institute) in New York (2002-04).Heiko holds Master degrees from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), and Potsdam University. He is co-editor of “Profiting from Peace: Managing the Resource Dimension of Armed Conflict“ (2006), and has authored publications on the political economy of conflict and peacekeeping, and the Sudan chapter in “The UN Security Council in the 21st Century”, edited by von Einsiedel, Malone and Ugarte (2016).