Prove Sarkozy wrong - historian
2007-09-24 07:25
Bamako - A Malian historian married to
the head of the African Union has challenged fellow academics to
produce a continental history book as a riposte to French
President Nicolas Sarkozy's view that Africans lack history.
The French leader enraged many Africans when he laid out his
Africa policy in July at one of French-speaking Africa's most
prestigious educational institutions in a speech many denounced
as patronising and out-dated.
"The tragedy of Africa is that the African man has not fully
entered into history ... They have never really launched
themselves into the future," Sarkozy said in the speech at
Cheick Anta Diop University in Senegal's capital Dakar.
The speech provoked a tirade of angry correspondence in
newspapers in Senegal and elsewhere in France's former African
colonies.
Adame Ba Konare, who is married to African Union chairperson and former Malian president Alpha Oumar Konare, said Sarkozy's
comments sprang from colonial-era misconceptions.
"These assertions are based on cliches, Euclidean theories
about Africa, colonial imagery, which said Africa had no
history," she said.
Ba challenged fellow historians to contribute articles to an
African history book to be published in 2008 which could be
presented to Sarkozy and the French authorities "to give them a
degree of knowledge about the history of Africa".