AfricAvenir

AfricAvenir Presents Itself

By Prof. Kum’ a Ndumbe III, Akademie Graz, 30. Mai 1999
[Deutsch / Français]

That’s how it all began ...

In the Ministry of Culture and Information. In Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon. We were sitting in the solemn meeting room. We, the directory of the Cameroonian Writers Association (APEC) and, on the other side of the conference table, the Minister and his directors. The discussion made no sense. We were asking for support from the Ministry in order to be able to print books, organise readings, lectures and conferences. We had no money to rent a room, we had no money to print books…

The members’ obligatory fees would have allowed us to hold a coffee break, not much more. We had more than hundred and thirty registered writers, but only shortly before the general meeting, few had paid their fees. The Chinese had built a splendid centre in Yaoundé and had offered it as a present to the State of Cameroon. The building was directly managed by the Ministry of Culture and Information. The writers wanted to regularly get in touch with the population, through readings, exchanges and discussions. The Minister was very enthusiastic about this idea. Then he asked if we would praise and glorify the President in our poems and stories and if the Writers Association was going to encourage this. As President of the Writers Association, I tried to explain to this high ranked civil servant that it was the private decision of every writer to decide himself whom to praise and glorify. This could not be the task of the Writers’ Association.

The Minister said that we didn’t understand the principle of “giving and taking.” That was, according to him, also the reason why he had no money for writers and intellectuals to organise conferences; that was the reason why he had no money to spend on the printing of books. For ten years, I was President of the Writers Association. For ten years, I had similar conversations, regardless who was Minister of Culture and Information. From time to time we were successful in getting some money, though we often did not get anything.

Since this time, the 1980s, I swore to myself that I would fight all my life for the possibility of every person - not only writers and intellectuals, but our whole population - to freely form his/her opinions and freely speak this opinion out, and for structures that support this free exchange of opinions.

These meetings were my first negative experiences in dealing with established politicians. At the same time these negative experiences also represented a personal challenge to me.

In the time I was President of the Writers association, I also taught “International Relations” at the University of Yaoundé with an emphasis on the evolution of the relations between Africa and Europe during the past centuries. I could not understand why European authors were praising Colonialism as an achievement for civilisation. The further I got in my research, the more I was shattered by the deep-going destruction of African societies and of the African being. After independence, our countries had put up governments, elected presidents and appointed ministers. But the closer I looked, the more I discovered how European - how Europe-impregnated – and outward-oriented the African intellectuals and leaders were, and how little of their thinking was African.

But wasn’t the task - the big challenge - to find solutions to African problems on African soil? Most of the decision-makers came up with obsolete or out-of-date European models to master African problems. Many of them honestly thought that was the way they could help Africa develop.

But this only led to frustration within the population, and people stopped spending their energies on improving the fate and the future of the country. During the dictatorship of the post-independence years, everyone just tried to survive and to help his/her family survive. Disappointment too often led to resignation in many African countries. The enthusiasm of the late fifties – the fighting years - had long disappeared. My own motivation grew greater and greater to try to create a free space - a niche outside the dictatorial State structures - which would allow new opinion flows to originate so a different perspective of our common fate would be articulated by courageous citizens. Create a free space … This idea was always haunting me: we must create a free space, a place where you can exchange opinions and experiences, a little island of hope in the middle of arbitrary rule, a meeting point where people encourage each other to have bold ideas and programs on how to get self-initiative back into the population. Our people have to take their fate into their own hands again. This will not be brought from outside, in spite of the official statements and discourses that we hear every day on the international scene. This will neither be encouraged by native dictators, who try to control even the smallest movement, and perceive a people’s initiative as subversion. How can we Africans living at the end of the 20th century find the way to ourselves? How can we find our human and personal equilibrium again, get self-confidence in ourselves again, and through all that lay the foundation for the leap into the new Millennium?

This is the only way that sustainable development will originate in our countries. I had long conversations with colleagues, who had become ministers. Some of them shared my opinions, but I quickly understood that as ministers their hands were especially bound, and everybody who seriously tried to move in that direction lost his job. I knew from the start that I would not get any financial support from the State of Cameroon. The idea and ideals were shared by many friends, but how could such a project be financed in Cameroon? The other point was that nobody wanted to invest his/her money in a project which would not offer financial rewards, particularly in a precarious financial environment in which everyone with his/her meagre salaries hardly managed to feed his/her own family. I had no other chance than to save up, to ask friends for material help and to beg my family for understanding.
The first success: Bookshop and House of the Press. At the end of 1987, the building with its big hall and the seven big rooms was ready, but we had no money left to start working. In April 1990, AfricAvenir was officially and joyfully opened in Douala as a Centre for Creativity and Research with an international bookshop and an equally international House of the Press. Very quickly, AfricAvenir became a meeting point. Writers signed their books, intellectuals met to exchange ideas, pupils and students were using the library, and citizens could get information through the newly admitted national newspaper and through the many international journals available.

We quickly noticed, though, that most of the people had no money to buy interesting books or informative newspapers and journals. That’s how the idea of an “information stock market” was born. A small group of voluntaries read the newspapers, copied a selection of articles, and fixed them on a bulletin board outside the building for everybody to see. Day and night people came and read and read. When the democratic opening that was sweeping over the African continent reached Cameroon, political parties were allowed and elections were held and AfricAvenir became a central attraction point. Presidential elections were organised for October 1992. At that time, several German students of Political Science and of Information Technology were participating in an internship program at AfricAvenir. Together with their Cameroonian colleagues and the AfricAvenir staff, we established an “information stock market” on the elections. Analysis on the democratic dawn, self-initiatives of the citizens, election campaigns, election results - everything was analysed on the computer, printed and fixed on the bulletin board. Even army officers came to read. Then the threats began. We were told to stop our work. The secret police searched the House of the Press on a daily basis to remove unpleasant journals and newspapers. We tried to defend ourselves and our work, saying that all admitted newspapers ought to be put at the disposal of the citizens. Sometimes it came to wranglings between the police and citizens, as the population supported AfricAvenir’s work. Then came the death threats and attempts to arrest me. The population kept watch over me in front of my house for six weeks. The secret police stood across the street. Then a policeman said that they would bomb AfricAvenir. I had to leave the country; the German Embassy, the German Academic Exchange Institution (DAAD) and the Free University of Berlin helped me do so. But that was only the start of police threats and regular burglaries.

Did I give up? No, I continued. Somehow.

The burglaries started when I was still in Douala. Computers were stolen, as were printers, fax-machines, library books. They broke in once, in spite of the guards, who sometimes were later found in miserable condition, fettered and bleeding on the ground. Then a second time, a third time … eleven burglaries. In the end even the guards participated. After each new burglary, AfricAvenir was demolished. Every time we had to start from the beginning again, until the end of 1995.

The bookshop had been destroyed, the House of the Press did not exist anymore, the computer system and the copy shop had had to suspend their work. AfricAvenir was just a shadow of its former self. When going back to Cameroon every year, I looked at the building and asked myself if these rooms with worn out floors, these nearly empty shelves, and these unused machines could possibly be the result of so many years of sacrifice and energy.

Many of the employees left: they had worked too hard, sometimes without getting any salary for several months. How could we get along? The challenge now was to keep AfricAvenir open every day, even if the building was in a miserable condition. We had no budget to pay the bills. Yet, AfricAvenir still lives on, and we continue our work, with the same question still in mind: How can we build up a structure for the population, which allows for fears to be spoken out, hopes formulated, initiatives translated into action, in order to help build another, self-sustaining and proud Africa? How can this structure survive a dictatorial regime and strengthen the civil society? A small foundation persistently supports the democratisation process. In 1993, the foundation AfricAvenir was founded with two main facilities. The already existing Centre for Creativity and Research was integrated and the Institute for Development, International Cooperation and Peace was planned. The idea was to educate and train highly qualified Africans in the fields of development, international cooperation and peace. Thanks to the cooperation with the “Ökumenisches Studienwerk” of the Evangelist Church in Bochum, Germany, AfricAvenir, the Free University (FU) and the Technical University (TU) of Berlin, a Doctorate Program was created for scholars chosen by AfricAvenir. Presently (1997), two AfricAvenir doctoral candidates are working toward their promotion and three more should start their theses before the end of the year.

These scholars get a scholarship at one of the mentioned German Universities and are trained in a specially designed program. While working on their theses, they have to accumulate practical experience, and complete projects, plan funding for these projects, and translate them into action. At the end of their research period, in addition to their theses, they have to present a project, which they will translate into action at AfricAvenir. With these young scholars, the Institute for Development, International Cooperation and Peace in Douala is supposed to start working in Winter 1999/2000.

In the meantime, seminars and African palavers are planned to prepare the work of the Institute. The past three seminars and palavers have taken place from January to April 1997 in Douala and Yaoundé. This work has been realised thanks to close cooperation with the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung. The central topic of the three seminars was the democratisation process and its relation to development in Cameroon and Africa in general. A woman from the city of Graz, Miriam Teschl, was at that time doing an internship at AfricAvenir and was a member of the secretariat of these seminars and palavers. I hope that she has had the possibility to report – here in Graz - on her experiences at AfricAvenir. Simultaneously with the seminars and palavers, AfricAvenir offers the possibility to evaluate international projects by African evaluation teams.

The Evaluation

The first application came from the government of Wiesbaden in the German state of Hessen. AfricAvenir delivered a two-volume work called “Evaluation of the Development Cooperation Programs Completed by the Organisation of the State of Hessen in Cameroon” in November 1994. It was followed one year later by “Evaluation of the ‘Directional Project’ Education in West Africa,” on behalf of the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS). Together with Andreas Mehler from Hamburg, the support of the democratisation process by the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung in Benin, Togo, Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso was evaluated. A further application came from the German Society for Technical Cooperation, GTZ. In August 1996, the essay on “Conflict Prevention by Means of Development Cooperation in Rwanda” was delivered, followed by three further commissioned works. Presently, three members of AfricAvenir are working on the project “Conflict Prevention in Rwanda” in Kigali. Through these concrete examples, the international dimension of the work of AfricAvenir members becomes clearer and Africa-wide experiences are accumulated even before the opening of the Institute for Development, International Cooperation and Peace.

Through the Institute for Development, International Cooperation and Peace, AfricAvenir wants to offer to different governmental and non-governmental organisations and institutions, which are engaging in corresponding fields, qualified advice and practical experience. This work is planned to be intensified later in Douala.

An “Information Stock Market” including a Databank

In the early 1990s, we already were facing the challenge of creating a structured information databank. After all the difficulties of 1992, we changed our strategy and started building a library at AfricAvenir. As we didn’t have enough money to buy that many books at once, I offered my own private library of about 4000 titles as basic stock to the foundation. The stock has grown bigger and bigger ever since, and a project is planned to increase the stock to about 15,000 titles. Simultaneously, a databank is to be created and connected with other databanks in Africa and all over the world. The emphasis of this databank is expected to be the following: Applied Technology for Africa, Innovative Economical Strategies, Democratisation and Conflict Prevention. Presently one employee of AfricAvenir is constructing this databank as part of the project “Conflict Prevention in Rwanda” in Kigali. Twice, our computers were stolen the very nights that work on the databank was finished. These burglaries do not intimidate us today after all we have been through, and we keep going on. In my opening address to the seminar series on the democratisation process, I invited our fellow citizens from the secret police to take part in the discussions, instead of visiting the institution at night when nobody was there.

Our Own Printing and Publishing House

When we opened AfricAvenir in 1990, our dream was to give the different target groups access to information, and to report and document the work of these target groups and to publish those opinions, which in our eyes were important to spread. So we started publishing books. After eight titles, we had to stop this work, as we were not able to constantly bear the high printing costs. We requested a study and decided to form our own Printing House. This Printing House was expected to print AfricAvenir publications and publications for the private sector, in order to partly bear the constant costs of AfricAvenir. At the end of January this year (1997), the Printing House was ready to start. AfricAvenir now has a Printing House with a TOK-Heidelberg, a Kors-Heidelberg, a complete laboratory, a cutting-machine, a platen, etc. This Printing House was made possible through a joint financing by AfricAvenir; Hessen state, thanks to the mediation of the World Shop Kassel; the state of Berlin through the ‘AfricAvenir-Supporters Organisation’; the foundation ‘Umverteilen,’ and the Ecology Shop in Rostock.

Today (1997) only the means to bear the costs for the first year, which would allow us to keep this modern Printing House running, are still missing. The Publishing Unit of AfricAvenir is now planning a big publication series. But for this work, we also need to find a financing possibility, because publishing work is a difficult task in an African country. Our aim is to publish especially in the local languages, not only in French or English, be it the publication of the election laws or of better methods of cultivating manioc. The colleagues in Douala are currently (1997) working on a study on the dissemination of printed information in the Central African region. “Why don’t you build wells in villages, which have no access to water? For such kind of projects we have budget guidelines to support AfricAvenir.” Or: “Why don’t you take care of the elementary needs of the population like food and health? We could have supported you on that.” Or: “Why don’t you have agricultural projects? On this we could have supported you financially.”

Many similar arguments and answers did we hear when, after eight years of self-financing, we tried to get international support. Our answer was always the same: “Yes, we know the priorities of international development cooperation with Africa. We have also had the possibility to see how such priorities are made and that Africans are absent in the commissions in which these priorities are established. AfricAvenir exactly wants to transfer these discussions to the different African countries, so that involved people and groups can discuss their present and future, set the priorities themselves as a compromise of the divergent opinions, engage for these decisions, and try to gain international partners. To offer a broad forum of dialog is still the priority of AfricAvenir. Therefore we look for partners all over the world.

A Challenging General Program

In April this year, AfricAvenir presented a three-year overall program, the translating into practice of which is being currently discussed in different commissions. The plan is to make all the different sections, the Institute for Creativity and Research as well as the Institute for Development, International Cooperation and Peace, really work until the year 2000. The Centre is expected to reactivate the Printing and Publishing House, and the Computer Network, including the databank and the section for Art and NGO-support within the three coming years.

Simultaneously, the Centre is expected to establish a section on Applied Research including an Advising Section, a small unit for education and continuing education, and finally a unit for educational media productions. A new building is to be constructed, which is expected to host the foundations’ activities and work, instead of the leaking old hall. In the coming three years, the structure of the whole foundation is to be consolidated and to grow more and more independent from its founder. New heads have to enter the administrative council; hopefully this will happen this very same year (1997) and a directory council has to be installed for the Centre as well as for the Institute. We hope to cure the big disease of AfricAvenir – management problems. Therefore we have to find a budget for the three coming years as voluntary work has shown insurmountable difficulties. The years 1997 through 1999 will be decisive for the ambitious idea “AfricAvenir.”

Perhaps you will think that what I just described is too ambitious, and this might be true. But the present challenges Africa faces need large-scale ideas, ambitious answers and courageous measures. Not resplendent palaces, that have been built with embezzled money, but meeting and gathering places of communication and exchange, where the future of African countries is discussed and shaped by the citizens of the respective country, where compromises are sought, and practicable solutions to the different questions of development, of regional and international cooperation, and of peace are found in a consensual way. That is what Africa urgently needs to reach an equilibrium in the dawn of this new century.

Therefore I am very grateful to the city of Graz, which has welcomed me with open arms from the first day when I, three years ago, for the first time set my feet on the ground of your ancestors. I held a lecture with the title: “I was born to live, not just to survive.” One person particularly understood my message. It was Emil Breisach, President of the Academy Graz, which had invited me. Then I came back a second time and held a lecture on “The Servitude of Money and the African Fate.” Emil Breisach introduced me to Mayor Stingl, whose speech impressed me very much, because he emphasized the common fate of the “one world” in the coming century. Later Mr. Breisach told me about the support from Mayor von Frohnleiten. I am very pleased to meet his deputy today. AfricAvenir and the Academy Graz are now bound by contract, which is a great achievement and I hope that this cooperation will enrich both sides.

Ladies and Gentlemen, please do not bear me a grudge for having talked so long, but I wanted to be precise and give you the details, although I had not enough time to be as detailed about AfricAvenir’s weaknesses. I have tried to concentrate on the ambitions in order to better describe the work that has to be done. Many fellow citizens from Cameroon have reproached me for not having built my own house and instead having spent my means on such an institution. I always answer them, that I had a roof over my head during my whole life and I hope that after my death the idea of AfricAvenir will be realised by some African states and that we will find partners on this planet who are able and willing to support this idea with us. This to me is worth more than a decent house. I ask you, as my friends in this country, to support my way of serving peace.