The Ansari Africa Center of the Atlantic Council is pleased to announce that French scholar Dr. Gérard Prunier has joined the Center as a nonresident senior fellow.

Prunier is the author of more than two hundred scholarly articles and a dozen books including The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide (Columbia University Press, 1995), Darfur: A 21st Century Genocide (Cornell University Press, 2005)—which was hailed by Foreign Affairs as “the best available account of the Darfur crisis”—and Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of Continental Catastrophe (Oxford University Press, 2008), which was awarded a special honorable mention in the Council on Foreign Relations’ 2010 Arthur Ross Book Award competition for the best book published in international relations, the first Africa-focused book ever so honored.

Until recently, Prunier served as a senior researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), France’s largest government research organization, and a professor at the University of Paris. From 2001-2006, he was seconded to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and served as the director of the Centre Français des Études Éthiopiennes in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Prunier has served as an advisor to private companies as well as European, African, and U.S. government agencies.

“Gérard has been a mentor and a friend as well as a one of the most distinguished scholars of Africa active day. I am delighted that he is joining us at the Ansari Africa Center and helping us in our effort to forge a new American and European strategic approach to Africa,” says Dr. J. Peter Pham, Director of the Ansari Africa Center at the Atlantic Council.

The Michael S. Ansari Africa Center at the Atlantic Council was founded to help transform U.S. and European policy approaches to Africa by emphasizing the building of strong geopolitical partnerships with African states and strengthening economic growth and prosperity on the continent. The Ansari Africa Center aims to engage and inform both policymakers and the general public of the strategic importance of Africa, both globally and for American and European interests in particular, through programs and publications as well as a robust media presence.

Prunier will help strengthen the still growing team of the Ansari Center, bringing his extensive experience and deep knowledge of East and Central Africa in particular as well as his network of governmental and expert contacts in Europe, thereby reinforcing transatlantic links of the Center and Atlantic Council.