Niagalé Bagayoko is a political scientist, and she’s currently the Chair of the African Security Sector Network (ASSN). Over the years, she has done extensive field research on security systems in African Francophone countries, Western security policies (France, United States, European Union) in Africa and African conflict-management mechanisms, focusing on the interface between security and development. She has taught at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Science Po) in Paris, and from 2010 to 2015, she managed the “peacekeeping and peacebuilding programme” at the International Organisation of La Francophonie (OIF). She was also a member of the Scientific Committee of the French IRSEM (Institut de recherches stratégiques de l’Ecole militaire). 

Dr Yvan Guichaoua is a senior lecturer at the University of Kent and convenor of the MA in International Conflict and Security. Prior to this, Yvan was a lecturer in International Politics at the University of East Anglia. He is also a former teaching fellow at Yale University and a research officer at the University of Oxford. His focus is on the dynamics of insurgency formation, rebel governance and state responses in Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali and Niger since 2004. Since 2007, Yvan Guichaoua has been studying Tuareg’s recurring rebellions in Niger and Mali and the rise of Jihadism in the Sahel. His works pay close attention to the complex interactions between violent entrepreneurs, low-level combatants and civilian populations shaping the success or failure of irregular armed groups as well as the forms of violence they perpetrate. His latest work concerns state and international responses to irregular militancy. Yvan engages regularly with the policymaking community and is frequently consulted by the media on the Sahelian crisis.

Giuseppe Mistretta has been Ambassador of Italy in Angola (2009 – 2014) and in Ethiopia (2014 – 2017), and has spent more than twenty years of his professional life in Africa.
For the last 5 years, he has been Director for Sub-Saharian Africa at the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.
He is the author of several books, such as “Un ponte lungo quattro secoli” (Gangemi 2013), “Angola. Un Paese moderno al centro dell’Africa (Polaris 2014)”; “I noti Ospiti” (Greco&Greco 2018); “Le vie dell’Africa (Infinito 2020) and “Africa’s pathways” (Luiss University Press 2021).
He also collaborated with La Repubblica and Corriere della Sera newspapers and to monthly magazine Capital.
He is frequently invited as guest speaker on African issues by the main Italian universities and think tanks.

Tatiana Smirnova is a researcher at Centre FrancoPaix at UQAM in Montréal. Her work focuses on socio-political instability, conflict dynamics, climate change and international interventions in the Sahel. Between 2016 and 2019, Dr Smirnova also worked as an international consultant (with Danish Refugee Council, Search for Common Ground, Transparency International, Promediation), realizing different assignments on the field in conflict-affected areas. She authored and contributed to multiple media pieces and publications, including the OECD report “The Geography of Conflict in North and West Africa” and a forthcoming publication by the World Bank.  

Denis Tull is a Senior Associate at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP). He currently leads the Megatrends Africa research project. Previously he was a Research Fellow at the Institute for Strategic Research (IRSEM) in Paris (2017-2020). His research and publications have focused on the topics of civil war, defence and security policy and political systems in the Sahel and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Giovanni Carbone (PhD, London School of Economics) is Head of the ISPI Africa Programme and Professor of Political Science at the Università degli Studi di Milano. His research focus is the comparative study of politics, geopolitics and economic development in sub-Saharan Africa, with particular regard to political institutions. Giovanni was previously a Research Associate at the Crisis States Programme of the London School of Economics and the Principal Investigator of a European Research Council (ERC) project. He edited and co-authored a report commissioned by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Italy’s policy in Africa, focusing on business opportunities in emerging sub-Saharan economies (La Politica dell’Italia in Africa. Contesto, interessi e scenari della presenza politica e economica italiana nell’Africa subsahariana, ISPI, 2013). His publications include: Political Leadership in Africa, Cambridge University Press (forthcoming 2018; co-authored with A.Pellegata); “Are lions democrats? The im­pact of democratisation on economic growth in Africa, 1980-2010” (Democratization, 2016, co-authored with V. Memoli and L. Quartapelle); “Leoni d’Africa. Come l’Italia può intercettare la crescita subsahariana” (2015, co-authored with M. Montanini); “L’Africa. Gli stati, la politica, i conflitti” (2012, II ed.)