About Matthew

Matthew was the U.S. State Department's top Nigeria expert.

Matthew T. Page was until recently the U.S. intelligence community’s top Nigeria expert. For more than a decade, senior policymakers at the White House, State Department, Defense Department, and in Congress have sought out his analysis on Africa’s most populous country and largest economy. 

Matthew is now a leading public intellectual focused on Nigeria. He is an associate fellow of the Chatham House Africa Programme in London and a non-resident fellow with the Centre for Democracy and Development in Abuja.  Matthew is also a non-resident scholar with the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is the co-author of Nigeria: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2018).

Previously with the Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Matthew also served as Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Africa with the National Intelligence Council. During his 13 years in the intelligence community, he wrote articles for senior policymakers on a wide range of political, military, and socioeconomic topics affecting Nigeria. He also served as senior analyst for West Africa at the Defense Intelligence Agency and as an Africa analyst with the U.S. Marine Corps. From 2015 to 2016, Matthew was an International Affairs Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Matthew has cultivated a robust network of official, academic, civil society, and private sector contacts outside Washington and in Nigeria, where he has traveled widely. He has spoken at the Nigerian National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, the American University of Nigeria, the U.S. National Defense University, the U.S Foreign Service Institute, the Frontline Club, among others.

Matthew’s expert Nigeria analysis has received accolades including the a National Intelligence Analysis Award from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, two Superior Honor Awards from the Department of State, and the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Civilian Meritorious Service Medal.

Matthew sits on the editorial board of Democracy and Development: Journal of West African Affairs and serves as a reviewer for the Journal of African Military History, ​Journal of African Elections, among others.