About the Author

After more than 40 years as a writer, journalist and editor covering African politics, business, economics and culture, Richard Synge now assists the Paris-based monthly magazine The Africa Report with compiling its annual country profiles and also supports the Wolfson Press Fellowship Programme (Wolfson College, Cambridge, UK) of which he is Assistant Director. He continues to undertake research into historical and current global issues.

Richard’s close familiarity with Africa arose from a childhood spent in Libya, Eritrea, Sudan and Nigeria. His interest was later developed through extensive travels in East, Southern and West Africa between the late 1960s and the first decade of the 21st century—a period in which the continent underwent truly momentous changes and upheavals.