Earlier this month, IIAS visited Dakar, Senegal to prepare for the upcoming Africa-Asia 3: A New Axis of Knowledge (AA3) ConFest. We met with our local partners at Cheikh Anta Diop University (UCAD), and Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie (AUF) and had the chance to explore the city for potential festival venues and collaborators. Viewing this visit from the lens of HAB's method of embedding within the local context, Aarti shares some of her photographs and provides a small window into Dakar's academic and cultural landscape.
On the first day of the visit, the IIAS team met with the UCAD and AUF partners and took a tour of the UCAD campus, eating at the faculty restaurant Chez Diabète and enjoying some traditional Senegalese dishes, such as thiéboudiène.
Chez Diabète restaurant
Thiéboudiène, a traditional Senegalese rice dish, usually served with fish, vegetables, and rice.
IIAS Team
Aissatou Seck from UCAD
Prof. Oumar Diallo from AUF, enjoying some thiéboudiène
Fonio, an ancient millet grown and eaten all throughout West Africa
Innovative use of a calabash attached to a carved tree trunk at the Chez Diabète restaurant!
The UCAD centre of aquaculture, which was adjacent to the restaurant
During the tour of the university, we had the chance to see the local campus atmosphere, which included services for students like printing and bookbinding, but also common spaces like the shaded gardens with benches where students spend most of their time reading and studying.
An afternoon tour of the campus
Local student services
Bookbinding in progress
Shaded Study Spaces
More Shaded Spaces
What a beautiful idea to use the open spaces for peace and calm to promote reading and reflection!
The building of the Institut fondamental d’Afrique noire or Fundamental Institute of Black Africa (IFAN), a research institute of UCAD focused on the study of West Africa
A bust of Chiekh Anta Diop, UCAD's namesake and Senegalese historian and anthropologist, whose work was focused on pre-colonial African culture.
A real elephant carcass located outside the IFAN building
A bag I bought from UCAD, the text in French means "the ignorance of history is a form of servitude"
On the second day, we met with our colleague from UCAD and environmental health researcher Yann Philippe Tastevin, who took us to visit Kër Thiosane, an art collective and cultural and social laboratory based in Dakar. Yann Philippe and Kër Thiosane's co-founder Marion Louisgrand-Sylla, gave us a tour of their facilities and neighbourhood, which included among other things, their community garden and playground. Founded on artistic experimentation, open culture, and shared knowledge, the art collective has been a bridge to connect researchers from around the world to life in Dakar with the help of artists, youth activists, and members of the community.
One of the ways they do this is through Defko Ak Niëp, their artistic and transdisciplinary educational fab lab and resource hub for digital creation and citizen artistic practices, in Senegal and Africa. The fab lab aims to be a local platform for the exchange of material & software resources and skills, offering support to project leaders within Africa. This is where Yann Philippe and Marion met, working together on the study of industrial pollution in West Africa through the deployment of particle sensors developed at the fab lab throughout neighbourhoods in Dakar.
A sign welcoming everyone to the Kër Thiossane art and multimedia villa.
In Wolof, Kër means home and Thiossane represents traditional Senegalese culture.
Marion giving a tour of Kër Thiossane
IIAS Team chatting with Yann Philippe and Marion
Kër Thiossane's community garden
A tour inside the fab lab
Following our visit to the fab lab, we also got the chance to see the IFAN Museum of African Arts or Musée de l'Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire. Also a part of UCAD through IFAN, the museum is one of the oldest art museums in West Africa and serves as the primary cultural research centre for studying French West Africa, housing and displaying collections by contemporary African and diaspora artists. Due to this, we checked to see if the museum could act as a venue for Africa-Asia but sadly the museum itself was closed. It was not a total loss, however, as we were still able to explore the museum garden, and chat with some of the young students who use the space for relaxation and play after classes.
IFAN museum and garden space outside the campus
The Espace de Meditation Culturelle or arts & cultural mediation space in the IFAN Museum gardens. See the photo of Cheikh Anta Diop.
Children from the local school nearby come and relax and also study and play here
These photographs were a brief look at the first two of the five days we were in Dakar, but even then I experienced quite a bit of life in the city. There is a rich history as well as interesting contemporary initiatives done by and in collaboration with the local community here, and an exciting look at what's to come for HAB and IIAS in Africa-Asia next June.
