Geoffrey Francis Archer
| Sir Geoffrey Francis Archer | |
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| Commissioner of British Somaliland | |
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In office May 1914 – October 1919 |
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| Preceded by | Horace Archer Byatt |
| Governor of British Somaliland | |
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In office October 1919 – 17 August 1922 |
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| Succeeded by | Gerald Henry Summers |
| Governor of Uganda | |
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In office 1922–1925 |
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| Preceded by | Robert Coryndon |
| Succeeded by | William Gowers |
| Governor-General of Sudan | |
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In office 5 January 1925 – 6 July 1926 |
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| Preceded by | Lee Stack |
| Succeeded by | John Maffey |
| Personal details | |
| Born | c. 1882 Kensington, London, England |
| Died | 1 May 1964 (aged 81–82) Cannes, France |
Sir Geoffrey Francis Archer KCMG (c. 1882 – 1 May 1964) was an English ornithologist, big game hunter and colonial official. He was Commissioner and then Governor of British Somaliland between 1913 and 1922, and was responsible for finally quelling the twenty-year-long Dervish resistance of Mohammed Abdullah Hassan ("Mad Mullah").
From 1922 to 1925, Archer was appointed Governor of Uganda. He later served as Governor-General of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan between 1925 and 1926. In the Sudan, Archer paid a formal but friendly visit to Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi, son of the self-proclaimed Mahdi Muhammad Ahmad, whose forces had killed General Gordon in 1885. Abd al-Rahman was leader of the neo-Mahdists in Sudan. Archer was eventually forced to resign due to the resultant flap, and spent the remainder of his career organising salt works in India.
In 1901, the nineteen-year-old Archer joined his uncle Frederick John Jackson, the acting high commissioner in Uganda. His uncle sent him on an ornithological collecting trip the next year. He visited Lake Albert, the Semliki valley and the Rwenzori Mountains, discovering over twenty species and subspecies that had been previously unknown to science. He went to Baringo in 1904 where he conducted extensive surveys. Archer was almost tempted to become a professional big game hunter.
On the basis of his survey work, Archer was appointed District Commissioner of the Northern Frontier district in Kenya. The district was treated as a closed zone with little contact with the rest of Kenya. It was basically a buffer against the Ethiopians, and was not considered to have any other value.
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