What's Happening in Sudan?

This webinar was held May 10, 2023. 

Dr. Gérard Prunier was born in Paris and studied both in France and in the US. After serving in the French Army he emigrated to Canada and later went to Africa as a Canadian aid worker, serving in Uganda. He fled the country in 1972 during the fighting that followed the attempt to overthrow Idi Amin Dada. Prunier became a political refugee in Tanzania, surviving by driving trucks. After traveling extensively throughout eastern Africa for several years, he returned to Europe and completed a Ph.D. on the expulsion of the Asians from Uganda, an event he witnessed in 1972.

Prunier joined the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in 1984 and wrote extensively on East African contemporary history and politics, with a particular focus on conflicts.

Over the last twenty-five years, he has written around 170 articles and nine books in four languages. His main books in English have been The Rwanda Crisis (London/Hurst. New York / Columbia U. Press.1995), Darfur: An Ambiguous Genocide (London/Ithaca. Hurst / Cornell U. Press. 2005) also published as Darfur: A 21st Century Genocide (Cornell U Press. 2008) and From Genocide to Continental War: The “Congolese” Conflict and the Crisis of Contemporary Africa (London/ Hurst. 2009). He edited together with co-editor Eloi Ficquet Understanding Contemporary Ethiopia: Empire, Revolution and the Legacy of Meles Zenawi. This work was co-published in 2015 by Hurst and Co in London and Oxford University Press America in New York. Prunier worked as Director of the Centre Français des Etudes Ethiopiennes in Addis Ababa between 2001 and 2006. 

Prunier is a senior fellow of the Atlantic Council in Washington D.C. He also serves as a member of the Academic Council of ASMEA and on the editorial board of the Journal of the Middle East and Africa. His latest book is The Country that Does Not Exist: A History of Somaliland (London. Hurst and Co. 2021).