Mr. Gaye Hamady, Curator of Central Library - University of Cheick Anta Diop of Dakar (Senegal)

Reappropriation of models of transmission and dissemination of knowledge in West African societies of the African Middle Ages

The cultural heritage of West Africa is a blend of Black African, Arab-Muslim, and Judeo-Christian civilizations. This syncretism has always been its source of richness and originality. Moreover, the spread of Islam will have a significant impact on people's lives. This strong influence of Islam has its origins in a long history, "more than ten centuries of spreading Islam…, borrowing its characteristic features from local cultures (Dumont and Kanté, 2012). This mixing of cultures gave rise to stone cities such as Chinguetti (or city of libraries), Wadane, Tichit, and Walata with their “sand universities and desert libraries,” as well as university centers such as Sankoré with its mosques featuring the famous Sudano-Sahelian architecture of Negro-Arabic inspiration and its Islamic libraries (Sidi Yahya). Most manuscripts are written in Adjami or Arabic. Adjami, a system of transcribing local African languages using the Arabic alphabet and well established in the education system, has always been a multicultural unifying element for the various West African communities in their quest for knowledge and scholarship, while also preserving endogenous knowledge. An unprecedented intellectual boom, Africa's intellectual golden age (10th-17th centuries)! However, since 2012, West Africa, particularly its Sahel region, has been facing an unprecedented security crisis. This context of insecurity and violence is leading to migration and forced displacement, which also has dramatic consequences for the social balance of traditional societies, endangering both tangible and intangible cultural heritage. This poses threats and obstacles to social, religious, and cultural practices, given that in Africa, communities maintain a very close relationship with their environment and territories of cultural expression. Therefore, in the face of this situation of peril to indigenous heritage and knowledge, it will be important to reinstate these dynamics of inclusion and resilient models of knowledge transmission and dissemination within the modern (often-contested) education system.

Pr.  Le Quellec Cottier Christine - University of Lausanne (Switzerland)

Pr. Doudier Samira - Hassan II University of Casablanca (Morocco)

Pr. Kane Coudy - University of Cheick Anta Diop of Dakar (Senegal)

Sub-Saharan literature and its history as an intercultural and integrative relay: creation of an educational resource

Collective proposal

The University of Lausanne is hosting the SNSF project “EthoSpatial Configuration: Towards a New Literary History of French-Language Sub-Saharan Africa,” led by Prof. Ch. Le Quellec Cottier, with a team in Switzerland and scientific partners in Senegal, Benin, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, South Africa, and France. This is a participatory approach, with joint work to articulate critical, postcolonial, and decolonial reflections in order to develop a transcontinental application relevant to various cultural areas. 

The project aims to bring together several audiences for cross-cultural transmission in an educational setting: the development of a textbook and a digital platform on Francophone literature in Africa, usable by both Europeans and Africans, in french. In Switzerland (and Europe), this literature, as defined in the research project, is very little known. Studying it allows us to consider different relationships with language and creates social and political bridges through the imagination. Her study also promotes the inclusion of migrant pupils and students. In Africa, the field of sub-Saharan literary history, depending on the region, is approached as such or in connection with Maghreb literature at university. The aim is to modify the usual criteria so as not to reproduce the essentialisms still present in the reading of the century. 

Approach: 

• Bring together three CIVIS universities and promote long-term scientific and educational exchanges (Lausanne and Dakar already linked for a CIVIS summer school on the question of engagement in literature); Casablanca, host university & specialist in the field: pedagogical and didactic transmission). 

• Inclusive reflection, through the involvement of specialists in complementary fields; promoting multiculturalism within a language. 

• Sharing values: moving beyond national borders; decoloniality of knowledge and moving away from essentialism through the creation of a corpus.