Foreign Policy

Rita Barbosa Lobo is a program assistant for the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) at GMF, where she works with the head of European operations.

In her studies, Barbosa Lobo focused on European Union law and common law, graduating from the University of Kent with a bachelor of laws and from the University of Amsterdam with a master of laws. Prior to joining ASD, she was a Schuman trainee at the European Parliamentary Research Service, External Policies Unit. Before that she was a program assistant at the European Policy Centre, Europe in the World program, and a research fellow at the United Nations University Institute on Comparative Regional Integration Studies. Her interests lie in European foreign policy.

Amandine Gnanguênon is a GMF Risk and Strategy nonresident fellow, and a senior fellow and head of the Africa Policy Research Institute’s (APRI) Geopolitics and Geoeconomics Program. She is also an associate research fellow at the United Nations University Institute on Comparative Regional Integration Studies.

Before joining APRI, Gnanguênon was an independent adviser to governments, think tanks, German foundations, African regional organizations, the EU, and the UN. She also worked at the European Council on Foreign Relations and the Institute of Security Studies in Dakar. She established and led the sub-Saharan Africa program at the Institute of Strategic Research at the École Militaire in Paris.

Gnanguênon’s research and analysis has been published on academic, policy, and media platforms. Her areas of focus include regional integration, peace and security, governance, digitalization, climate-related issues, and EU-Africa cooperation.