François GAULME
Associate Research Fellow, Sub-Saharan Africa Center
Research Interests:
- France’s and UK’s African policy
- Security and Development; integrated approach
- International aid mechanisms
- Historical anthropology
- Gabon, Congo- Brazzaville, Central and Western Africa
François Gaulme, an anthropologist and historian by training, is an Associate Research Fellow at Ifri’s Sub-Saharan Africa Center. A former Editor of the weekly Marchés tropicaux and the quarterly Afrique contemporaine, he lectured on Africa at the Institut d’études politiques, at the Catholic University of Paris, and at the Saint-Cyr Coëtquidan National Military Academy.
He recently retired from service at the French Development Agency (AFD) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he specialized in situations of conflicts and of State fragility. His publications include Le Gabon et son ombre [Gabon and its Shadow] (Paris, Karthala, 1988).
In 2020-2021, Prime Minister Boris Johnson undertook to fundamentally change the operational mode and strategy of relations between the United Kingdom and the African continent bequeathed by his predecessors since 1997.
This paper aims to highlight both the financial, economic and political adjustment cycle, affecting two Central African petro-states, Gabon and the Republic of Congo (Congo-Brazzaville).
Both perpetrators and forms of violence change. States are no longer the central referents of contemporary conflicts. We can no longer understand them as the outcome of a linear history starting from tribal societies and leading to Western political structures.
Up to Europe’s threshold in the middle of Sahara and Sahel region, a growing insecurity led beyond mere reconsideration of field practice to a whole change of paradigm for multilateral and bilateral aid institutions.
President Déby was killed while visiting troops on the frontline, according to an army spokesman.