Alert! Paris’ Quai Branly museum is currently hosting an exhibition on the first twenty years of Présence Africaine, the quarterly journal of culture founded in the city in 1947 by Alioune Diop. “As a journal,” says Wikipedia, “it was highly influential in the Panafricanist movement, the decolonisation struggle of former French colonies, and the birth of the Négritude movement.”
Radio France International’s Susan Owensby met with Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka at the museum to discuss the exhibition, and captured their conversation for a “sweet-sour” podcast about the anti-colonial journal:
The exhibition at the Quai Branly focuses on the major role played by Présence Africaine in the political and cultural history of black Francophone, English-speaking, and Portuguese-speaking intellectuals. To give you an idea of its importance, among the guests at the opening was Wole Soyinka, the first African to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Soyinka has been involved with Présence Africaine for decades. Through the encounters organised by the group, intellectuals, writers and artists can meet and exchange notes on the cultures of the black peoples, he told RFI. That helps them become better known and can influence thinking.
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