Highlights – Non-Fiction – Présence Africaine

Summary: Each in her field was the first to exercise a profession hitherto reserved for men: magistrate, doctor, teacher, mayor, artist… In a mainly male-dominated world, they have shattered many prejudices and endured many criticisms.

This book aims to revive the memory of these determined and courageous pioneers, who were incredibly ahead of their society in their time.

Bio: Born in Porto-Novo in 1935, Géraldine Faladé, a journalist associated with the creation of La Vie africaine, worked at the Office de coopération radiophonique, the ancestor of Radio France Internationale, and contributed to the development of the press within of Chad’s Ministry of Information. She currently lives between Paris and Cotonou. Author of a collection of tales, Regards et parles du soir (Cauris), collected on the advice of her sister, the pediatrician and psychoanalyst Solange Faladé, Géraldine takes up the pen again here to bear witness to the feminist struggles of the first hour.

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Summary: A serie of conversations with twenty activists and feminist academics, mostly from Africa and the diaspora. These dialogues aim to shift knowledge production on feminism in Africa from a decolonial perspective, and focus on feminist practices, philosophies, aspirations, challenges and joys.

It’s a controversial question: do feminist, anti-racist and LGBTQI+ movements fall under the general scope of universalism? Or should they be broken down into smaller sub-movements to better address the intersectional nature of oppression? In her latest book “African Feminisms”, University of Edinburgh professor Rama Salla Dieng considers what it means to be a feminist specifically in Africa, through a series of interviews with activists across the continent.

The debate on feminisms in Africa has not finished shaking up the comfort of the patriarchy. All over the African continent and the diaspora, people, in addition to theorizing their definition of feminism make more of it than a one-off fight, it is a way of life. It is a question of breaking with this old preconception that African women are ignorant of feminist struggles. Rama Salla Dieng is one such person who is interested in these struggles, documenting and popularizing them in several languages ​​and on different platforms. In this book, she conducts a series of interviews and conversations, at the heart of which various feminist and political experiences are explored at length. Rama Salla Dieng returned to the motivations for this series and the lessons learnt from it. We also learn about parenting during the Covid-19 pandemic, the urgency of reviewing the imposition of gendered characteristics, a possible handling of feminist issues in a socialist political system, the parameters to take into account for the effectiveness of the achievements of women’s rights, the much-needed politicization of African youth and the world after Covid 19.

Bio: Rama Salla Dieng is a Lecturer in African Studies and International Development and Director of the Africa and International Development Master’s Program at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Her research focuses mainly on the political economy of investments in Senegalese horticulture and Senegal’s development policies, Gender and Development, as well as feminism in Africa.

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African and Southern feminists are part of a global movement against sexism, patriarchy, and exploitation; however, their feminism is also concerned with solving structural problems specific to each society/country/region. Being a feminist has a particular meaning for each of them. They claim their differences, their convergences and recognize the priorities and struggles specific to their respective contexts and identities, all while promoting collective action and claiming the sisterhood and heritage of the precursors who “paved the way” for them.

Summary: This book analyzes the life and work of Guyanese historian and politician Walter Rodney (1942-1980), his formative years, his influences, his ideology and his political action. Although Rodney has been the subject of half a dozen monographs in English, this work is the first work in French devoted to this English-speaking historian.

The book is aimed at both an academic audience interested in African worlds and a “militant” audience interested in development issues and social struggles.

Publication: Présence Africaine, 2018
Language: French
Rights: World rights to Présence Africaine
Genre: Biography
Extent: 334 p.

Bio: Amzat Boukari-Yabara was born in Cotonou (Benin) in 1981. He holds a PhD in African history and civilizations from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and speaks at numerous scientific conferences. He is currently a researcher with the Interuniversity Group for Research and Studies on African Societies (GIERSA), affiliated with the Department of Anthropology at the University of Montreal.

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Summary: It is high time for a reappraisal of African philosophy. But to appreciate something you first need to get to know it. According to Séverine Kodjo-Grandvaux, knowledge about African philosophies can help us with contemporary crises. The ecological crisis, the financial crisis, the democratic crisis, they all have a basis in our modernity thinking. The idea that we humans are superior to others and that there is a gap between humans and nature. In African philosophies, community and connectedness come first.

This ground-breaking essay highlights themes and issues that mobilize contemporary African philosophers both in French-speaking and in English-speaking areas, epitomizing an unique opportunity to understand that philosophy is not locked-up into culture or language, but encounter and translation. The author invites us to discover why African philosophy is first and foremost a relational philosophy, beyond material and intellectual boundaries.

With an introduction by Professor Souleymane Bachir Diagne.

Award: Prix Louis Marin for Overseas Sciences.

Bio: Séverine Kodjo-Grandvaux is a Philosopher and Associate Researcher at the Paris 8 Faculty’s department for Studies and Research on Contemporary Logic and Philosophy. She is also a journalist working for several Media: Le Monde, Jeune Afrique…

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Séverine Kodjo Grandvaux wrote African philosophies taking into account the important English literature existing in this field. His book bears witness to how important it is today to bring together reflections separated by the linguistic boundaries inherited from colonization (especially Francophone Africa and Anglophone Africa). Above all, this book shows that after the controversy of an entire “African philosophy”, we now have to adjust our discourse to the moving reality of African philosophies as a plurality. —Professor Souleymane Bachir Diagne