János Besenyo is a full professor in the Óbuda University, Donát Bánki Faculty of Mechanical and Safety Engineering (Hungary) and head of the Africa Research Institute. Between 1987 and 2018, he served as a professional soldier and served in several peace operations in Africa and Afghanistan. He received a PhD in military science from Zrínyi Miklós National Defense University (Hungary) and he received a habilitated doctorate at Eötvös Loránd University (Hungary). In 2014, he established the Scientific Research Centre of the Hungarian Defence Forces General Staff, and was its first leader from 2014 to 2018. His most recent publication is Conflict and Peace in Western Sahara: The Role of the UN's Peacekeeping Mission (MINURSO).Leonid Issaev is an associate professor at the Department of Political Science and International Affairs and the vice director of the Center for Stability and Risks Analysis at the HSE University (Russia), and senior research fellow at the Institute for African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.Andrey Korotayev is the Director of the Center for Stability and Risks Analysis of the HSE University (Russia), the senior research professor of the Oriental Institute and Institute for African Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, the senior research professor of the International Laboratory for Political Demography of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, and a professor at the Faculty of Global Studies of the Moscow State University.