Alain ANTIL
Research Fellow, Director of Ifri's Sub-Saharan Africa Center
Research Interests:
- Mauritania, Sahel, West Africa
- Social and political issues
- Security and terrorism, traffics
Alain Antil is a Research Fellow and the Director of Ifri's Sub-Saharan Africa Center. He also teaches at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques of Lille and at the Institut Supérieur Technique Outre-Mer (ISTOM).
Alain Antil gained his PhD in political geography at the University of Rouen. Prior to this, he was an Associate Researcher at the Laboratoire d’Etude du Développement des Régions Arides, collaborated for the International Crisis Group and regularly contributed to the Sciences Humaines review. He has also taught at the University of Rouen and the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin en Yvelines.
Condemnations of French policy in French-speaking Africa have grown in recent years[1]. The grievances raised are manifold (military interventions, persistence of the CFA franc, development aid policy, restrictive visa policy, etc.) and the reasoned contestation, which focused on...
On February 27, 2023, Emmanuel Macron delivered a speech on French-African relations before traveling to Central Africa to meet with the leaders of four countries: Gabon, Angola, Congo, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. This briefing looks back at the key moments of his latest presidential...
As French President Emmanuel Macron (accompanied by Ursula von der Leyen) is on a state visit to China, some twenty Ifri researchers decipher the stakes of the U.S./China/Europe strategic triangle.
Germany, despite the reluctance of its public opinion, is committed to supporting security in the Sahel, notably through its participation in the European Union Training Mission in Mali (EUTM) and recently in Niger, and in the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in...
The year 2020 was to be a pivotal year for (re)formulating Europe's Africa strategy. Germany and France were committed to strengthening relations between the two continents and to consolidating them at the sixth summit of the African Union and the European Union, which was postponed because of...
With sluggish economies that create few jobs, soaring demographics, international aid often considered as revenue, and a security apparatus unable to protect national territory and its population, are the Sahel states losing control of their own domestic areas?
Mauritania's political system displays certain democratic qualities that go some way to meeting international standards.
By organising TICAD (Tokyo International Conference on African Development) for the first time in Africa in August 2016, Japan intended to accelerate and deepen its relationship with the continent.
France’s current presidential campaign has created an unprecedented situation fuelled by revelations and a total absence of restraint, but it has not truly taken account of the disruptions of the last year: Brexit, the attempted coup in Turkey, the election of Donald Trump, the recapturing of...
The Mauritanian President, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, was elected in 2009. The architect of two successful coups: in 2005 against President Maaouya Ould Sid’Ahmed Taya, and in 2008 against President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdellahi, nowadays he is in his second and last term of office according to the...
The European bloc is involved in two training missions in Mali – the EUTM and the EUCAP – to coach soldiers and police.
Days before French President Emmanuel Macron visited West and Central African leaders this week to talk security, Islamist fighters sent a defiant message -- a suicide attack on the headquarters of a five-nation force that is supposed to take the lead in fighting terrorism in the region.
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