A major cultural event took place here in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa earlier in June this year. The East African Arts and Culture Festival kicked off under the theme “Arts and Culture for Regional Connection.” Representatives from Uganda, Burundi, South Sudan, and Somalia as well as representatives from various regional states in Ethiopia have reportedly attended the festival.
This was good news indeed but it would have been better to call the festival’s motto Arts and culture for regional integration rather than regional connection. The term “connection” is not as strong as “integration” which is the major objective of the African Union’s Charter. Art and culture should be put in the service of African integration which is supposed to lead to total continental union sometimes 2063 following a projected economic union.
The role of art and culture in Africa’s regional integration is quite evident. If we look back at the history of Africa the 19th and 20th centuries were times of the continent’s colonization. The second half of the 20th century on the other hand ushered in an era of decolonization. From the second half of the 20the century to this time, Africa is still fighting or the total or comprehensive independence of the continent. The long process of political, economic and social freedom of Africa cannot however achieved by embracing the fractured and atomized identities Africans were subjected to live under colonialism and neocolonialism.
Long before the advent of colonialism, we can safely assume that Africa, like any part of the world had no dividing borders and foreign subjugation. As history develops unevenly, it so happened that some parts of the world could achieve faster evolution towards statehood while Africa and some other parts of the world lie Asia and Latin America underwent a period of retardation and underdevelopment that led the more developed part of the world, namely in Europe and later on America aspired to base their economic development on the invasion and occupation of less developed regions of the world.
By doing so, developed regions exploited the natural resources of continents like Africa in order to finance and expedite their own economic development at the cost of the weak and defenseless regions. In this way, Europe became the first colonizing region that led not only to the economic subjugation of the less developed parts but also recreated these conditions at a global scale as it sought to control the natural resources necessitated for their own advancement. In the meantime colonialism had to subjugate Africans not only politically but also economically and more importantly, control their cultures arts and philosophies in such a way that they could be used for the perpetuation of colonialism but also to their erosion, disappearance and replacement by colonial cultures and arts, education and philosophy. The awakening of Africa was retarded in a planned and conscious manner because it could spell the end of colonialism and had spelled its end indeed after many centuries.
The 1960s heralded the end of colonialism and the political independence of hundreds of millions people on the continent. Yet, cultural and artistic values that developed naturally within the continent were subverted to such extent that it was not possible to reclaim African values overnight or at the same time of political independence. African independence rather created another dilemma or problematic which as the fragmentation of the once-united entity into more than 50 different countries. The declaration of political freedom by African countries was easier to achieve than achieving cultural, artistic and value changes that were formed through long centuries. It was natural that getting rid of the colonial legacy of Africa’s cultural domination was bound to take longer years than anticipated at the time of decolonization.
A reverse process of integration in Africa started as soon as colonial domination ended. Europeans had divided Africa not only along national lines. They have also done so along regional lines based on language, history, geopolitics and the ultimate interests of colonialists that had now evolved or changed colors and assumed the role of neocolonialists. Africa was thus divided geographical but also linguistically and according to spheres of influence as French, English, Portuguese and/or Arab speaking ones. They were divided on the basis of the shape and comparison created in east Africa for instance that are now known together as East African or Horn of Africa countries.
The Horn of Africa was a strategic asset for Europe since its inception as more than one colonizer vied and fought for the control of the countries in the region. Great Britain, Italy and later America and even secondary global forces like the Arabs were fighting to carve out spheres of influences that have contributed a great deal to the present political, social, and cultural face of the East African nations that are struggling to reclaim their lost or eroded common identities by forming all kinds of regional cooperation.
In the meantime the political and economic efforts to bring east African nations together could not come to fruition as it has been consistently sabotaged or torpedoed by the neocolonial machinations of old and new powers. Meanwhile the East African countries had no time or sufficient comprehension and commitment to put the cultural and artistic aspects into the regional integration equation by giving exclusive focus to the political issues and by marginalizing the other factors like culture, education, arts and philosophy that could have expedited the process of regional union. In an Article entitled, “Integrating Africa though Arts and Culture”, the author Kiagho B. Kilonzo writes that, “Integrating the East African region through culture has probably not been given much thought or made much of a priority in East Africa and Africa as a whole. Though integration of the East African nations began during the colonial era and passed through challenges in different phases, a space for culture or visual art in particular, has not been much realized in this case.”
A new vision for making art and culture instruments of East Africa regional integration could only materialize recently. On this point the author says that some efforts were being made recently in order to, “support the vision and mission of the East African community of creating a borderless society of East African people by integrating the East African nations by using culture, to make a meaningful contact between artists and the people of East Africa and beyond.”
During the recent Addis Ababa conference on Arts and Culture in East Arica, the Ethiopian view was articulated by minister of culture who said that, “The time is ripe to lay the centuries-old relations between Eastern African countries on unity and strong foundation, the importance of understanding the facts that no one can be a winner by running alone, therefore the need to “strengthen our unity.”
It is quite obvious that this kind of regional unity should be based on strong institutions that would expedite the process. First and foremost, Africa needs strong cultural institutions based on African values and realities and not as carbon copies of Western or Eastern models of institution building. The work of institution building in the cultural and arts areas should therefore start from below, from the people and not as it was the case in the past from above or from the elites. This kind of institution building did not succeed in the past because it simply did not reflect the needs and aspirations of the people of the regions and those of Africa in general.
Institution building in the framework of making art and culture serve regional integration in any part of Africa should be based on democracy. This democracy cannot be similar to Western democracy. African democracy should be based on African historical and cultural values and not imitate ready-made Western models of democracy. The relevance of any conference on art and culture in East Africa, as it was the case of the latest event, should take into consideration and be based on the values of the communities living in each and every country of the region. As most of the cultural boundaries traced in East Africa or anywhere in Africa in general are artificial by nature it may not be a very difficult task to undo what has been done by colonialism in the past because colonial boundaries are artificial and that is why they are now triggering conflicts and misunderstandings among even people sharing the same cultures, languages or mental setups or values.
Moreover, the work of institution building needs to be carried out on a permanent basis and not occasionally. All members of the East African region in our case, need to come together to set up a permanent body that would coordinate and articulate the activities in collaboration with the African Union special department for cultural affairs in collaboration with governments of the East African region with the help of the educated elites of each member state. The challenges of institution building in general and cultural institution building in particular have always been great because of foreign interference and other negative developments.
As one blogger recently noted, “foreign intervention in the developing countries hinders the development of independent institutions, and protects the strategic interests of their former colonizers (metropolis). For example, in the first quarter of the 20th century, the British did two major things in the Middle East which affected not just the entire region but the rest of the world; namely, they undermined the peace, prosperity and development of the region. No doubt that it is important to guard against such pitfalls in the course of cultural institution building in East Africa that has always attracted foreign strategic interests in the area. The process should therefore be fully owned and fully operated by Africans alone in order to guarantee its success.
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
The Ethiopian Herald 25 June 2022
