"Africa and the inner gaze" was the theme of the first roundtable of the "International Conference Pensar África", which began this Tuesday in the Angolan capital and runs until Wednesday.
For Nelson Pestana, director of the Center for African Studies (CEA) at the Catholic University of Angola (Ucan), thinking about Africa poses "from the outset a methodological and substantive problem".
"Our choice is the critical and genealogical method, it is a permanent criticism based on an evolutionary perspective, so we are faced with two Africas: an imagined Africa and a real Africa", said Nelson Pestana.
"The imagined Africa is a homogeneous Africa, authentic under the cover of inculturation and in constant interaction with the peoples. The real Africa is heterogeneous, it is plural, it is in constant loan exchanges with other cultural spaces", said the director of the CEA.
According to Emmanuel Natakarutimana, a professor from Burundi and one of the speakers at the meeting, it is "urgent" to transform the resources and infrastructure of the African continent for the benefit of the people, considering that African problems "need African solutions".
"Because, for example, physical and imaginary borders in Africa are also problems that prevail and lead to conflicts that need to be addressed", he stressed.
Natakarutimana also regretted, in her speech, the conflict between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and praised the actions of the President, João Lourenço, for the pacification of the region.
The "International Conference Pensar África" is organized by Mosaiko – Angolan Institute for Citizenship in partnership with CEA and runs until Wednesday, in the Angolan capital.
The rector of Ucan, Maria de Assunção, said, at the opening of the meeting, that thinking about Africa is a very suggestive and provocative theme, especially in a context of enormous challenges facing Africa today.
She listed the economic sustainability of each African state, the assumption of multi-party democracy, basic sanitation, improving the health system, education, reducing corruption and others as the "enormous challenges" that Africa still faces.
For Maria da Assunção, Africa also has the challenge of "creating stimulating policies in order to keep African intellectuals, young and old, putting an end to the drama that we have witnessed, fearlessly and serenely, the death of hundreds of thousands of young Africans" in the Mediterranean Sea.
"In such a context, thinking about Africa is an exercise that is imposed on all Africans, both individually and collectively. Is it over there.
Africa and an inner look and African identities are the thematic panels scheduled for the first day of the "International Conference Think Africa".
