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Thinking regarding the world together and thinking regarding it in another way. This is the ambitious project that has just been launched by three higher education establishments in Africa and France: the Ecole Normale Supérieure d’Ulm in Paris, the University of Thiès in Senegal and that of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. The three establishments have created a consortium which will encourage the mobility of students and teachers, and offer a common course entitled “New understandings of the world”. Why this project? What needs to change in what the university transmits on Africa and the world? To talk regarding it, our guest is one of the leaders of this project, the rector of the University of Thiès, the philosopher Ramatoulaye Mbengue Diagne.
RFI: Why do you want to work on new understandings of the world? What do you want to change from the university’s current discourse on Africa and the world?
Ramatoulaye Mbengue Diagne: The discourse we held on the world can no longer continue to allow us to read the changing world. Not only must Africa be reintegrated into the world, but the rest of the world must also change its gaze on Africa and look at Africa as equals, and look at Africa also as a focus of thought , world building and world reading. On both sides, both on the side of the world if I may say – the rest of the world – and on the side of Africa, we have to go beyond the stereotypes, not to say the fears of some relation to others, etc. I believe we are at a historic turning point for humanity. Now we are an interconnected world: the problems of some are planetary problems, the problems of others are also planetary problems.
What do you think needs to change in this discourse on the world and Africa?
I think we have to go beyond a certain imbalance, more or less unconscious, which consists in thinking that it is up to the world to give to Africa, that it belongs to the universities of the north, to the other universities to bring to Africa. I think there needs to be more recognition of the fact that everyone, equally, has something to contribute.
We see Ramatoulaye Mbengue Diagne, at the present time, a speech of rupture, carried by militant figures who claim the defense of African dignity. Doesn’t the project you’re carrying suddenly come at the wrong time in relation to the evolution of mentalities in Africa?
It is true that there is a discourse of rupture, there is also a discourse of reaction and emotion. This consortium project is not out of step with these discourses of rupture, but for this consortium it is a question of recalling the fundamentals, namely that it is not in division, it is not in violence, verbal or otherwise, that we will manage to build a world in which we can live together. And that’s why I think that this consortium comes at the right time, that it should be a school. Beyond the emotion, beyond the reaction, we must be able to sit together, read the world together in different ways, and understand that these different ways of reading the world can only enrich each other, instead of taking anything away from us. And I think that this co-construction of the world, this co-construction of humanity that we share is one of the major challenges of the moment. This consortium also seeks to make a contribution.
Some say: Africans must regain control of the discourse on themselves. With this project of co-construction of the discourse on Africa, are you not in a different perspective from that?
The orientation and philosophy of this consortium is that Africa is a subject and not an object of discourse. It is not a question of seeing together what we should say regarding Africa, it is a question in this consortium of asking Africa to tell the world in the same way as the other partners who will also propose world readings. It is a mutual enrichment for both the north and the south to give everyone the opportunity to express themselves, to speak and to expose their own understanding of the world. And that’s why it was important to put “new understandings of the world” in the plural.
How are you going to concretely implement this project?
Each of the universities, the École Normale Supérieure on rue d’Ulm, the Iba Der THIAM University in Thiès and the University of the Witwatersrand, will offer courses. There will be distance courses, there will also be face-to-face courses, we will follow the same courses through all the universities that are members of the consortium. These lessons, these modules, will also be open to professionals and older people.
Can other universities, from Africa or elsewhere, still join this consortium?
This is what is hoped for, is that other universities in Europe, in the United States, in Africa can come and join the consortium, that we can really have this multi-campus, multidisciplinary, multilingual training and that allow once once more to promote the opening of universities to each other and once once more, this co-construction of a world, of a common future.