Serge Michel

Serge Michel, born 40 years ago in Switzerland, is a freelance journalist. Until the summer 2008, he was West Africa Correspondent for the French newspaper Le Monde.

Michel has worked as a journalist in Europe, Iran and the Balkans. He won the Albert Londres Prize, France's most prestigious journalistic award, for his work in Iran.

He's the founder of the Bondy Blog, a popular website and a stunning experience of "citizen journalism", written from within the volatile French suburbs.

Together with Paolo Woods, Michel is the author of Un Monde de Brut (Seuil, 2003), a behind-the-scenes look at the oil industry following pipelines through Texas, the Caucasus, Russia, the Gulf and Africa and of American Chaos (Seuil 2004) which trails America's turbulent path through Iraq and Afghanistan.

Together with Paolo Woods and Michel Beuret, he has just published China Safari - On the trail of Beijing's expansion in Africa (Nation Books, 2009), charting China's dramatic rise in Africa. The book has a grand scope and an air of adventure: it takes the reader from clear-fell logging in the Congo to uranium extraction in Saharan sands; from China's grimmest industrial landscapes to fine dining in Angola's best restaurants.

Michel has written for Aperture, Fortune, Foreign Policy and The Independent.