The Festival de Marseille hosts two major proponents of African critical thinking. Felwine Sarr is a Senegalese economist, philosopher, poet, musician, free thinker and playwright. He is the author of Méditations africaines (2012) and Afrotopia (2016). Achille Mbembe is a historian specialising in the “Cameroon maquis”, a political scientist and a philosopher whose theory sometimes has a poetic dimension. He is the author of Sortir de la grande nuit : Essai sur l’Afrique décolonisée (2010), Critique de la raison nègre (2013), and Politiques de l’inimitié (2016). Both challenge existing political and economic models, and are convinced that Africa can be a global driving force—as long as decolonisation is completed, as long as its values are updated, and as long as it embraces a civilizational project anchored in its “positive potentialities”. Also taking part in this round table will be dancer and choreographer Serge Aimé Coulibaly and stage director Eva Doumbia, both on the Festival programme, and Cameroonese filmmaker Jean-Pierre Bekolo.

In partnership with Festival d’Avignon and Festival Africa Fête