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Twenty three years after publishing Hérodote’s issue “A Middle Africa”, we are choosing the same theme. For certain, the geopolitical situations have evolved: the tragic consequences of the Rwandan genocide ease up overtime, and the political situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo got stabilized. However, the geopolitical situations of this wide area remain complex and contentious because they are rarely contained to one State. Also, in order to understand them, it is necessary to change the scale of analysis and take into account wider spaces and longer timeframes. This is the way Roland Pourtier pursued when he selected the authors of this issue, all of them being specialists of this region. Thanks to their deep knowledge of the field, their analyses are precise and help to understand seemingly endless conflicts.