Afrique contemporaine: continuity and change (1961–2021)

Editor-in-chief of Afrique contemporaine from 1999 to 2006, and the architect of its transition from Documentation française to l’Agence française de développement (French Development Agency), François Gaulme gives us his personal view of the major changes that have marked the life of the journal over the past sixty years. In what he himself calls “a sort of essay on oral tradition”, without claiming that it is an exhaustive survey that has yet to be undertaken, he looks back at the foundations of, and editorial developments in, the journal, in relation to developments in French political and administrative structures and, more broadly, in Franco-African relations.