Mr. Ould Abdallah is the President of the Centre for Strategy and Security in the Sahel Sahara (Centre4s).
After pursuing higher education in Economics and Political Science in France (Grenoble and Paris), between 1969 and 1984, he successively held the positions of Minister of Commerce and Transport, Ambassador to the United States and to the Benelux countries and the European Union, and finally Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation.
United Nations Career: Between 1985 and 1996, Ahmedou Ould Abdallah served as a Director at the UN headquarters in New York, before being deployed to the field as the Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) in Burundi from 1993 to 1995.
From 1996 to 2002, he joined the World Bank to head the Global Coalition for Africa, chaired by Robert McNamara, in Washington DC.
Returning to the United Nations, he was appointed Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) for West Africa (from 2002 to 2010) before serving as SRSG in Somalia from 2007 to 2011. In 2015, the Secretary-General appointed him as a member of the Panel of Experts tasked with reviewing the UN’s Peacebuilding Architecture. In 2019, he was selected to chair the Group established by the UN Secretary-General to review the United Nations Regional Office for Central Africa (UNOCA).
Ahmedou Ould Abdallah is a founding member of the NGO Transparency International and remains a member of its Advisory Council. In addition to supporting and advising the Promediation team during mediations, he serves on several advisory boards for private and non-profit organizations.
He has published two books on his UN experience: La Diplomatie Pyromane (1996, Calmann Lévy) and Burundi on the Brink (2000, US Institute of Peace), as well as his memoirs: Plutôt mourir que faillir (2017, Ed Descartes et Cie), translated into Arabic in 2020.