Mushahid Hussain Sayed has a long experience and interest in Africa from his student days. As a student, he founded the Pakistan Youth Committee on Afro-Asian Solidarity.
While in the United States, he studied Africa among his principal areas of academic interest in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, where his Academic Adviser, Dr. Chester Crocker, a leading American expert on Africa, later went on to serve as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs in the administration of President Ronald Reagan. As journalist, he covered the war in Western Sahara & interviewed Yasser Arafat in Tunisia as well as Sudan’s Sadiq al-Mahdi in London.
As Minister for Information, Culture and Tourism, he had the honour to serve as Minister-in-Waiting for President Nelson Mandela during his visit to Pakistan in May 1999.
He also had the privilege of interacting with President Julius Nyerere, when he visited Pakistan in 1989 as Chairman of the South Commission.
He served as Leader of Pakistan’s Parliamentary Delegation to Nigeria in 2021 as well as the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) General Assembly at Luanda, Angola in October 2023.
He was elected Vice President of the IPU Committee on Human Rights of Parliamentarians, during the IPU Conference in Kigali, Rwanda in October 2022 where he focused on issues of democracy and Human Rights in Africa.
He also served as Convenor of Pakistan-Nigeria Parliamentary Friendship Group in the Senate during 2021-2024.
He is the first Pakistani to be invited to a BRICS official event, when, in August 2023, on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit, he was specially invited in his personal capacity by the National School of Government & the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa to the BRICS Forum on People-to-People & Cultural Exchanges in Johannesburg.
