The Lion & The Historian: Towards Arts And Culture Market

Cameroon Sun 14-12-2008

The Lion & The Historian: Towards Arts And Culture Market
By Mwalimu George Ngwane

The recent South African Arts and Culture exhibition in Cameroon, which show-cased the sheer cultural wealth of the country, was both a forum for intercultural dialogue and a launching pad for creating an arts and culture market at continental level.

The relevance of a culture market in Africa is based on the firm conviction that African artists have a right to their own voices, their own stories and their own imaginations. Yet since the Black World Festivals which took place in Dakar (Senegal) in 1966 and Lagos (Nigeria) in 1977, there hasn’t been a viable festival of arts and culture covering the continent.

Now one is planned for Algiers in July 2009, given impetus from the creation of the African Union and NEPAD.

For this to be sustained in the long term, however, a number of things have to be tackled:

Untitled By Kamal Shah

^{Untitled | Kamal Shah}

Government initiatives

Initiatives like those of the South African High Commission in Cameroon need to be replicated in African Embassies and High Commissions around the continent. Governments would have to review the role of cultural counselors or Attaches and equip them with the wherewithal to promote and trade indigenous Arts.

This presupposes that the Ministries of Culture (attached or autonomous) would have to transcend the ululation culture (culture for political entertainment), for culture is a process, not just an event. It is not lip service to politics but a service to human civilization. It is one of the ways in which man finds his bearing in the world.

Governments must recognize and support the various aspects of cultural expression such as the performing, visual and plastic arts; art galleries, museums, heritages and sites. A national cultural space should therefore consist of an inventory of national artists and a directory of material and non-material cultural patrimony. A coherent and holistic cultural ideology serves as a magnet for international attraction and an export of national identity.

A relative successful area of government action in art/culture trade is the book sector. Endeavours by governments to support international book fairs have paid off in Zimbabwe, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya and Egypt. Each year these fairs become the market place of ideas and the cutting edge of book trade in Africa.

Other areas include the film festival (FESPACO) in Burkina Faso and design promotion (FIMA) in Niger. Unfortunately apart from sporadic seed support to artists and periodic cultural competitions, other sectors in arts and culture still suffer from lack of adequate government action in Africa. This vacuum is being filled by civil society actors through the creation of cultural industries and individual resource networking.

Civil society action

Whether as individuals or associations, the civil society in Africa is vibrant in the arts and culture creativity as well as in transnational cultural exchanges, albeit with a diminishing donor intervention and a decline in local demand and consumption.

The design industry was revolutionized by the late Malian designer Chris Seydou. By using rich traditional African fabrics such as Kinte cloth, Bogolan and Rabol among others Chris Seydou torpedoed the Eurocentric influences on Africa’s tropical design.

Following his death in 1994, Alphadi of Niger, Etienne Marcel of Cote d’lvoire and other African designers set a new fashion agenda with creations that celebrated the value of Africa’s textile heritage and with markets spanning from Sandiaga in Senegal to Dantokpa in Cotonou- Benin.

The film industry continues to excel from the pioneer contributions of the late Sembene Ousmane (Senegal), Pierre Yamoegoue (Burkina Faso), and Bassek ba Kobhio (Cameroon) to the Nollywood phenomenon in Nigeria.

Rhythms and sounds of Africa’s musical griots and gurus resonate across the continent’s colonial boundaries as the music industry draws support from individual production houses and mega events like the Kora Award initiated by the Beninois Ernest Covy.

The carnival tradition (pageant and colourful parade) that was borrowed from Africa and exported to the Caribbean and Latin America has now been reclaimed and popularised in Senegal.

Cultural industries are being set up by nationals outside their countries of origin like the Cameroonian Werewere Liking’s special village for the artistic education of young people in Cote d’lvoire and the Cameroonian photographer Samuel Fosso’s self-portrait photography established in Central African Republic.

Sculptors like Lillian Nabulime of Uganda and Kerster of Mozambique; curators like Joseph Ndiaye of Senegal and Kinni Yen Kinni of Cameroon; architects like Mick Pearce of Zimbabwe and Adelijelil Temimi of Tunisia; painters like Hassan Musa of Sudan and Malangantana of Angola and archivists like Henry Mbain of Cameroon and Ellen Namhila of Namibia yearn to break their national boundaries and share together a continental pool of creativity and commerce.

Socio-cultural activists and art historians like Aminata Traore of Mali, Mahmood Mamdani of Uganda and Femi Kuti of Nigeria need to be provided with a continental platform that will advance their discourse on the inter-relationship of economics, politics and culture as well as the corrosive cultural effects of globalization.

Indeed since the African politician, economist and traditional ruler insist on selling the African soul back to the invader, the artist must insist on establishing an organic link between Africans and their continent.

Media

There cannot be an African culture business without an Africa-oriented media. Aspects of our cultural heritage and art history continue to occupy peripheral spaces in the print and audio visual media in Africa.

As a result, the younger generation long became alienated from the immense repertoire of the continent’s creative processes. They are easy prey to the omni-present ideas of the West.

As Nigerian novelist, Chinua Achebe puts it: ‘until the lion produces its own historian, the story of the hunt will glorify only the hunter’.

African Union

In tandem with government and civil society action, the African Union would need to formulate an arts and cultural policy for the continent. It would need to organise arts and culture festivals at sub-regional levels, support specialised training in the arts and craft (through sub-regional workshops) and encourage personnel for cultural administration.

Sub-regional consultations would develop a data base of art products and an art bank of consumer needs to provide the necessary mechanism for trade between artists and the continent’s milliard, potential consumers. It would also help the African Union define actions and strategies for the production and marketing of arts and culture and eventually create a continental cultural citizenship.

Some of these objectives can only be attained if individual countries overcome the fits of national jingoism and xenophobia. Art policies should, while favouring nationals not exclude or discriminate against non-nationals.

Visa fees need to be affordable; and art taxes need not be prohibitive. The freedom of movement of people, goods and services still remains a major handicap to African Unity. Yet an African arts and culture common market is such a feasible enterprise with spill over on an economic boom.

The challenge today therefore lies on all stakeholders who must reinvent a new cultural mentality and art vision that would provide a climate conducive for the creation of a viable and vibrant art and culture market in Africa.

Mwalimu George Ngwane is a writer and panAfricanist as well as a cultural professional in Cameroon. He heads both the National Book Development Council Cameroon and AFRICAphonie. www.gngwane.com and www.Africaphonie.org

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