Pitcho

Né en 1975 à Kinshasa (République Démocratique Du Congo, ex-Zaïre), Laurent Womba Konga, mieux connu sous le nom de Pitcho, arrive en Europe en 1981. Loin de ses racines, il se cherche une identité, et c'est vers la Culture Hip-hop que va se diriger sa curiosité. D'abord simple spectateur, il est ensuite poussé par l'envie de faire bouger les choses. Il devient rapidement un des acteurs incontournables de la culture Hip-Hop en Belgique. Les nombreuses récompenses et critiques reçues au cours de sa carrière attestent de son engagement et de ces qualités artistiques. Pour Pitcho, même s'il connait bien l'asphalte des villes urbaines, la vision du monde ne s'arrête pas juste au coin de la rue. Sa plume est comme un scalpel qui dissèque chaque élément marquant de sa vie. Elle cherche à toucher l'âme des gens tout en essayant de les divertir. D'où l'importance du fond dans forme ! Sa passion pour les mots et la scène le poussent aussi à s'essayer au Slam et au théâtre avec succès. Après avoir joué un rôle dans une pièce de Koffie Kwahulé (mise en scène par Rosa Gasquet) il sera repéré par le célèbre metteur en scène Peter Brook avec qui il fera deux grandes tournées mondiales qui dureront quatre ans. A cause du manque de structure capable d'encadrer des artistes issus de la mouvance Hip-Hop, Pitcho décide, avec Lino Grumiro, de créer en juin 2005 l'asbl «Skinfama». Cette structure a pour but premier de favoriser le développement de toutes les formes artistique en relation avec les cultures urbaines. Pitcho, rappeur, slameur, comédien et entrepreneur est avant tout un artiste avant d'être un musicien et un musicien avant d'être un rappeur.

Pitcho

Né en 1975 à Kinshasa (République Démocratique Du Congo, ex-Zaïre), Laurent Womba Konga, mieux connu sous le nom de Pitcho, arrive en Europe en 1981. Loin de ses racines, il se cherche une identité, et c'est vers la Culture Hip-hop que va se diriger sa curiosité. D'abord simple spectateur, il est ensuite poussé par l'envie de faire bouger les choses. Il devient rapidement un des acteurs incontournables de la culture Hip-Hop en Belgique. Les nombreuses récompenses et critiques reçues au cours de sa carrière attestent de son engagement et de ces qualités artistiques. Pour Pitcho, même s'il connait bien l'asphalte des villes urbaines, la vision du monde ne s'arrête pas juste au coin de la rue. Sa plume est comme un scalpel qui dissèque chaque élément marquant de sa vie. Elle cherche à toucher l'âme des gens tout en essayant de les divertir. D'où l'importance du fond dans forme ! Sa passion pour les mots et la scène le poussent aussi à s'essayer au Slam et au théâtre avec succès. Après avoir joué un rôle dans une pièce de Koffie Kwahulé (mise en scène par Rosa Gasquet) il sera repéré par le célèbre metteur en scène Peter Brook avec qui il fera deux grandes tournées mondiales qui dureront quatre ans. A cause du manque de structure capable d'encadrer des artistes issus de la mouvance Hip-Hop, Pitcho décide, avec Lino Grumiro, de créer en juin 2005 l'asbl «Skinfama». Cette structure a pour but premier de favoriser le développement de toutes les formes artistique en relation avec les cultures urbaines. Pitcho, rappeur, slameur, comédien et entrepreneur est avant tout un artiste avant d'être un musicien et un musicien avant d'être un rappeur.

Ato Quason (University of Toronto)

Ato Quayson is Professor of English and Director of the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto, where he has been since August 2005. He did his BA at the University of Ghana and took his PhD from Cambridge University in 1995. He then went on to the University of Oxford as a Research Fellow, returning to Cambridge in Sept 1995 to become a Fellow at Pembroke College and a member of the Faculty of English where he eventually became a Reader in Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies. Prof Quayson has published widely on African literature, postcolonial studies and in literary theory.

Science, Public Health, and (Post)Colonial Urban Evolution

The paper will focus on three inter-related themes. First is the degree to which colonial urban planning in the city of Accra since the 1900s depended heavily on notions of sanitation /disease control and disaster management. Second is how disease and sanitation control were themselves were predicated upon a particular contagial notion of disease and the human agents thought to be responsible for its spread (mendicant and itinerant traders, for example) that was supported by the scientific notions of the time. And third is the various ways in which such notions helped to situate a particular idea of the African colonial urban subject that was partly contested and partly acquiesced to by different classes of the colonized. The consequences of these vectors for the overall unfoldment of the African urban and the concomitant post-colonial ideologies that evolved to deal with them will be subject to elaboration and critique.

Diana Adesola Mafe (Denison University, Granville)

Diana Adesola Mafe is Assistant Professor of English at Denison University. She received her BA in Fine Art and English from McMaster University, Ontario, Canada (2002), her MA from the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada (2003), and her PhD from McMaster University (2008). She teaches courses in postcolonial, gender, and black studies, and her research aims to situate mixed race studies in a relatively unexplored sub-Saharan African context. Her work also tracks the literary roles of and for "women of color" in African and American discourses. She has published articles in Research in African Literatures, American Drama, English Academy Review, Frontiers, and Safundi. Her latest work on Western media representations of Africa will appear in Camera Obscura. Currently, she is revising her dissertation for book publication. The revised project reads the literary stereotype of the tragic mulatto as a cross-national and transatlantic trope in both South African and American literatures.

Close encounters of the postcolonial kind: District 9 and Aliens in Africa

What are common cinematic portrayals of science in postcolonial Africa? What kinds of binaries and hierarchies do mass media reinforce when depicting African science? To engage with these questions, I examine the recent film District 9 (2009), which represents science in Africa in both a literal sense (the film was shot on location in South Africa with state of the art technology) and a thematic sense (the film is "science fiction"). My argument is that the film's representation of science in postcolonial Africa supports problematic models and stereotypes. This critically-acclaimed South African film was produced with Western partners, funding, and equipment and vetted primarily by Western viewers. The film condemns the ways in which pseudoscience has historically facilitated racism, but it also resorts to stereotypical images of cannibalistic black African characters. Although extraterrestrials convey an optimistic image of science as a symbol of hope, they are (tellingly) unable to harness their own advanced technology until the very end of the film and then only with the aid of the white male protagonist. Despite subversive intentions, the film portrays science in ways that support racialized models (white European enlightenment versus black African traditionalism). Similarly, the narrative and production of the film seemingly endorse Africa's crippling dependency on external aid. Indeed, the giant alien mother ship with infinite potential but no internal drive serves as a loaded metaphor for the continent itself. Ultimately, District 9 reminds us that fictional representations are often damaging contributors to so-called "reality" and vice versa.

Mulumbwa Mutambwa Georges

Mulumbwa Mutambwa Georges est détenteur d'un doctorat en Langues et Lettres (sociolinguistique) de l'Université libre de Bruxelles. Présentement, Il est enseignant - chercheur à l'Université de Lubumbashi en RDC. Il a participé à plusieurs enquêtes de terrain sur les questions portant sur l'enfance (travail, vie de rue, abus et violences sexuels, etc.), la criminalité, le budget ménager, la santé, l'éducation, l'alimentation, les identités, les plantes médicinales, les croyances et religions en contexte congolais. La multiplicité de ces recherches de terrain financées par des bailleurs au profil diversifié (Unicef, Banque Mondiale, Coopération universitaire (Belge) au Développement, Bureau Salésien de Développement, des ONGD internationales, etc) ont tôt souligné la nécessité de repenser certaines approches pour mieux rendre compte des spécificités locales. Ainsi, la prise en compte des aspects sociolinguistiques est restée au cœur de sa démarche et met en évidence les représentations sociales ainsi que les interactions qu'elles induisent auprès des acteurs sociaux. Parmi ses publications, on peut citer : Le Bulumbu, un mouvement extatique au Sud-Est du Zaïre, 1997, Annales du Musée Vol. n° 157, Musée Royal de l'Afrique Centrale, Tervuren (avec Verbeek L.); La crise : Lexicon and Ethos of the Second Economy in Lubumbashi, in Africa, Edinburgh, London, 75:44, 467-487, 2005,Edingburgh University Press (avec Petit P); Le lexique de la violence des enfants de la rue (shege) de Lubumbashi: sens et signification in (Digneffe F.& Kaumba L. éd),2008, Criminologie et droits humains en RDC, Bruxelles, Larcier, pp.201-220.

Africanisation et globalisation du savoir en RDC. Bilan critique des postures politiques et épistémologiques?

Cette communication vise à mettre en exergue le dilemme dans lequel le système éducatif congolais a évolué depuis l'indépendance. Il s'agit d'une part de satisfaire aux exigences souverainistes des gouvernements et d'autre part de rester ce lieu ouvert à l'universel où les colorations nationalistes s'estompent pour l'émergence d'une culture scientifique internationale. Dès 1960, les discours politiques des dirigeants ont eu comme leitmotiv la rupture avec l'ordre colonial. L'enseignement étant dépendant de l'Etat (subventionné par lui ou requérant une autorisation de fonctionnement de ce dernier) se devait de produire un savoir conforme à la politique générale du pays. L'examen de différentes réformes de programmes de l'enseignement met en exergue des mesures tendant à l'africanisation de l'éducation. Mais on y observe aussi des hésitations et parfois des recherches prononcées de la globalisation; ce qui soulève le questionnement suivant : quelle attitude épistémologique doit adopter le scientifique congolais (africain) pour produire un savoir qui rende compte des spécificités congolaises (africaines) et participe en même temps à l'internationalisation de la culture scientifique? Dans l'entre-temps, la physionomie des réalités congolaises a beaucoup changé et rendu obsolètes certaines théories et méthodes scientifiques conçues hors du contexte local. La solution reste envisageable au niveau de la revisitation des postures épistémologiques et à celui de l'accessibilité aux nouvelles technologiques de l'information. Ces dernières nécessitent à leur tour un minimum d'infrastructures pour favoriser les échanges à travers les forums internationaux en présentiel ou par vidéoconférences. C'est en proposant des spécificités africaines en termes de méthodologie et d'approches ancrées dans leurs réalités locales que les pays africains peuvent contribuer à l'émergence d'une science véritablement universelle où chaque peuple apporte ce qui lui est typique et en même temps capitalise les acquis des autres. Mes propos sont illustrés par les expériences tirées des recherches menées par les équipes mixtes des scientifiques congolais et belges.

Sarah Van Beurden

Sarah Van Beurden (Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania, 2009) is Assistant Professor of History in the Department of African-American and African Studies at the Ohio State University. She conducts research in the US, Belgium and the Democratic Republic of Congo and is working on a book " Authentically African: African Arts and Postcolonial Politics." She has been a visiting scholar at the National Museum for African Art in Washington DC, the Institute of National Museums in Congo and a reserach fellow at the Institute for Historical Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

John Tabuti (Makerere University, Kampala)

Dr. John Tabuti is a university educator, ethnobotanist and researcher. He has more 14 years of university teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in ethnobotany and plant biology. He has published extensively. His research interests are in identifying useful species that have the potential to satisfy human subsistence needs and also provide opportunities for income generation. He has documented the uses of indigenous plant species, and researched the effects of such use on the plant populations. He has also undertaken efficacy and safety studies for medicinal species. He is also interested in promoting and conserving useful plant species. To achieve this second aim he has studied plant population structures and biology. The outputs of these researches have led to the identification of useful plants and threatened species that can be domesticated. The results also indicate that indigenous woody species are threatened and that there is need to develop management action plans to slow down loss of these species.

Mirjam de Bruijn (ASC, Leiden)

Mirjam de Bruijn is an anthropologist whose work has a clearly interdisciplinary character. She has done fieldwork in Cameroon, Chad and Mali and an important theme throughout is how people manage risk (drought, war, etc.) in both rural and urban areas. She focuses on the interrelationship between agency, marginality and mobility. Her specific fields of interest are: nomadism, youth and children, social (in)security, poverty, marginality/social and economic exclusion, violence, slavery, and human rights. In Mali she worked in the Mopti area with the Fulbe (Peul) and in Menaka with the Tamacheck (Tuareg), while in Chad she has worked in N'djamena (the capital) and in Central Chad with Hadjerai and Arab groups. In Cameroon she works in the Grassfields and the north. Her new research programme is a comparative study of the role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and ICT's interrelationship with agency, marginality and mobility patterns in Central and West Africa. Dr Mirjam de Bruijn has been appointed Professor of Contemporary History and Anthropology of West and Central Africa at the Faculty of Arts at Leiden University as of 15 June 2007. She pronounced her inaugural lecture "De telefoon heeft benen gekregen; Mobiele communicatie en sociale veranderingen in de marges van Afrika" op 5 september 2008.

Wenzel Geissler (London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo)

After studying history and biology I turned to medical parasitology and started to work in Africa, conducting doctoral research on intestinal worm infections. After some public health research, I then returned to study social anthropology and I went back to the same East African field site for a second, ethnographic, field research, this time to study shifting understandings of relations and touch, memory and time, among the people from a western Kenyan village. Since 2003, I teach social anthropology at the London School of Hygiene, and since 2008 in Oslo. In my research I draw upon my double training in science and anthropology by studying medical science in Africa. My ongoing research projects include a collaborative study of history and historical consciousness, remains and memories of the Kenyan government's Division of Vector Borne Diseases (DVBD) with an emphasis on the post-colonial period, and on the transformations of government, public health and science that the past decades have brought about. This study draws, in addition to oral histories and archival work, on ethnographic work with the Division and among its staff and their families. More recently, we have commenced long-term ethnographic field research in the collaborative field research station of the Kenyan Medical Research Institute, KEMRI, and the USA's Centres for Disease Control, CDC, in Kisumu, Kenya; our interest is here directed at the manifold collaborative relationships among the members of the 'trial community' ¬— including scientists and staff, as well as participants, 'local community' and 'the public' - that are constituted by clinical trials and programmes on HIV. The former, historical-anthropological project and the latter ethnography are both attached to institutions and to people in the city of Kisumu, Kenya, and to rural 'study areas' of medical research across western Kenya. I hope that the historiographic and ethnographic work will eventually come together in a historical ethnography of medical scientific and public health work in Kenya from mid 20th century to the present.

Richard Rottenburg (MLU Halle, MPI for Social Anthropology)

Richard Rottenburg holds a chair in Social Anthropology at the Martin-Luther-Universitaet Halle-Wittenberg (Germany) and is Max-Planck Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (Halle). His research focuses on the anthropology of law, organizations, science and technology (LOST). He has written and edited books on the Sudan, on organizations, on economic anthropology, and on the transcultural production of objectivity (2009 Far-fetched facts. A parable of development aid, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT; 2009. Social and public experiments and new figurations of science and politics in postcolonial Africa. Postcolonial Studies 12 (4): 423-440.).

Antonie Kraemer (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London)

Antonie Kraemer is a PhD student in Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Her doctoral research project, funded by a Norwegian Research Council Environment and Development studentship, focuses on changes and continuities in natural resource access around Fort Dauphin, Madagascar, with a year's fieldwork carried out there in 2008-2009. Antonie holds an MA in the Social Anthropology of Development, also from SOAS, and an MSc in the History of International Relations from the LSE. Antonie's return to academia was inspired by her job with UNDP Madagascar from 2004 to 2006, where she experienced the paradox of why seemingly good policies frequently fail due to the complexities of "development" encounters.

Science, visuality and knowledge production about "nature" in Madagascar

European scientists have shaped how we view African landscapes. Such dominant knowledge production, associated with the word "science," is still influencing access to land and natural resources in resource rich African countries. This paper explores representations of "nature" in the context of struggles over natural resources in Madagascar. The focus is on the visually-informed representations of the concept of "nature," and how it is strategically used to legitimate specific claims to land and natural resources. Based on a year's ethnographic fieldwork in Madagascar, I explore how these representations have contributed to a neo-liberal partnership around natural resource extraction and conservation by an international mining corporation in collaboration with environmental NGOs. I argue that this partnership, based on scientific knowledge production about the region, is rendering the resulting displacement and loss of livelihoods of local people, as well as the destruction of endemic littoral rainforest, a technical matter to be addressed by socio-environmental "expert" scientists rather than political and contestable. In making this argument I seek to highlight the need to go beyond the textual focus on "discourse" and "narrative" in analyzing the power of Western science, instead highlighting the particular ways of visualizing the world which both underpin and are generated by linguistic categories. I argue that the Western scientific tendency to focus on visual aspects of "nature" and its physical classification sidelines other elements of embodied and cultural value. This visual focus also entails reducing nature to a static system, with the aim of resource management in Africa to preserve this stasis in particular sites of pure "nature", separated from human "culture", and acting as an "offset" to sites of multinational natural resource extraction for Western consumption.

Paul Kerstens (KVS)

Paul Kerstens is sinds 2005 verantwoordelijke voor het Afrika-traject van de Koninklijke Vlaamse Schouwburg (KVS) van Brussel. Hij studeerde Germaanse Filologie en Afrikaanse Talen en Culturen (UGent) en werkte als assistent voor de parlementaire Lumumba-commissie. Hij publiceerde artikels over Afrikaanse literatuur en koloniaal erfgoed. In 2001 startte Green Light in KVS, een denktank van jonge Belgische artiesten van Afrikaanse afkomst.

Jean-François Bayart (CNRS)

Jean-François Bayart, directeur de recherche au CNRS, ancien directeur du CERI (Centre d'études et de recherches internationales, Paris), président du Fonds d'analyse des sociétés politiques et du Réseau européen d'analyse des sociétés politiques) a consacré l'essentiel de ses travaux à la problématisation de l'historicité de l'Etat et à l'étude comparée du politique. Ses premières recherches ont porté sur les sociétés politiques africaines. Il a notamment publié à ce propos L'Etat en Afrique. La politique du ventre (1989, 2006 pour la nouvelle édition; traduction anglaise chez Polity Press). Il a ensuite élargi son propos, dans une perspective comparative, à la critique des concepts de culture et d'identité (L'Illusion identitaire, 1996. Traduction anglaise chez University of Chicago Press) et à la critique politique de la globalisation (Le Gouvernement du monde, 2004. Traduction anglaise chez Polity Press). Son souci d'appréhender l'historicité du politique l'a amené à exprimer ses réserves à l'encontre des postcolonial studies (Les Etudes postcoloniales, un carnaval académique, 2010). Son dernier livre, L'Islam républicain. Ankara, Téhéran, Dakar (Albin Michel, 2010) traite des trajectoires républicaines de passage de l'empire à l'Etat-nation en Turquie, en Iran et au Sénégal - et répond à la vague d'islamophobie qui balaye l'Europe.

Les études postcoloniales, une invention de la tradition?

Les études postcoloniales se sont imposées comme un courant important des études culturelles et de la recherche en sciences sociales de langue anglaise. Il est de plus en plus reproché à l'Université française de les ignorer, alors que des militants et des historiens engagés interprètent la crise des banlieues dans les termes d'une « fracture coloniale » plutôt que sociale. Ce mauvais procès n'est pas fondé. Il occulte toute une tradition d'écrits et de travaux qui ont perpétué en France une pensée critique sur la colonisation. Il tient pour acquise la contribution scientifique des études postcoloniales, qui certes ont pu être utiles, dans leur diversité, mais qui sont largement superflues au regard des apports d'autres approches. Surtout, les études postcoloniales restent prisonnières du culturalisme et du récit national dont elles prétendaient émanciper les sciences sociales. Et elles s'interdisent de comprendre l'historicité des sociétés, celle du moment colonial, celle enfin de l'éventuelle transmission d'un legs colonial dans les métropoles ou dans les pays anciennement colonisés. Leur reconsidération fournit l'opportunité d'ouvrir de nouvelles pistes de réflexion pour l'analyse de l'Etat, au croisement de la science politique, de l'histoire, de l'anthropologie et de l'économie politique.

Pierre Petit (ULB)

Le Laboratoire d'Anthropologie des Mondes Contemporains (LAMC) constitue le principal centre de recherche en anthropologie de l'ULB. Ses membres sont animés par des préoccupations méthodologiques, épistémologiques et théoriques convergentes : prise en compte de la dimension à la fois globale et locale de tout objet anthropologique ; intérêt pour le rôle des acteurs, tant producteurs que produits du social ; nécessité d'une approche plus réflexive que substantive de la culture. En pratique, le LAMC regroupe neuf enseignants-chercheurs, une vingtaine de doctorants ou post-doctorants boursiers et une dizaine de collaborateurs scientifiques. Il organise des séminaires de recherche ainsi qu'un cycle de conférences en anthropologie, sur une base mensuelle.

Patricia Schor (Utrecht University, Research Institute for History and Culture)

Patricia Schor is a PhD candidate at Utrecht University. She holds an MA from the Institute of Social Studies - The Hague, with a thesis on Afro-Brazilian religions. Her PhD research was initiated at King's College London and transferred to the Utrecht University in 2008/9. It focuses on the continuities and reconfigurations of the Portuguese empire in contemporary narratives of the Portuguese language, which represent points of contact with Africa. Patricia has conduced field research in Lisbon, as Associated Researcher to the Centre for Comparative Studies - University of Lisbon, group Dislocating Europe. At Utrecht University she is an Affiliated Researcher to the Research Institute for History and Culture, group Textual Culture; and is a member of the Postcolonial Studies Initiative. Patricia was recently awarded a Prins Bernhard Scholarship to carry out comparative research on the representations of Africa in Portugal and Brazil. Before her PhD, she worked at Oxfam-Novib, as Programme Officer Lusophone Africa. She maintains her critical engagement in the field of Development. In 2009 she published the book chapter Dinâmicas de cooperação entre ímpares (ed. ACEP, Lisbon). Her research interests are Europe's post-imperial imaginaries, post-colonial representations of Africa, Border theory and language discourse.

Language as art object: Africa in the representations of the Portuguese language - Brazil and Portugal

After the demise of the Portuguese territorial empire in 1975, following the Portuguese loss of the independence wars in Africa, the Portuguese language assumed a core role in the constitution of the Lusophone community, which includes Portugal and its former colonies in Latin America, Asia and Africa. There is an imperial meta-narrative inscribed in the most muscular representations of the Portuguese language outside Africa. This narrative has been shaped greatly through symbolic exchanges between Portugal and Brazil along history. It either relegates Africa to a subordinated position, or acts a disappearance of the African contribution to the formation of national identities in Portugal and Brazil, and to the identity of the Portuguese language community. This paper presents the preliminary results of a research on the representations of the Portuguese language in the Museum of the Portuguese Language in Brazil, and in the convoluted trajectory of its homologous museum in Portugal. The main focus of the analysis is how Africa is manifested in these representations. The museums will be analysed as sites for performance of culture and tradition where the colonial legacies of exoticism and neo-colonial commodification meet processes of empowerment and participation (Clifford 2003). As such they offer new possibilities – and constrains - for negotiating the terms of engagement of the African Other in these national and transnational narratives of the Portuguese language. The paper aims to arrive at conclusions about the continuities and reconfigurations of the empire in two contemporary aesthetic manifestations of the Portuguese language: Brazil and Portugal.

Branwyn Poleykett (London School of Economics)

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Branwyn Poleykett is a PhD student at the Institute of Social Psychology at the London School of Economics. Blending archival, oral history, and ethnomethodological approaches, my doctoral work builds a history of the postcolonial regulation of female commercial sex work in Dakar, Senegal. I trace the translation of the "problem" of urban commercial sexuality into the frame of reference of two communities of practice: experiment science and urban social development.

Working together: collaboration and partnership in HIV/AIDS science in Dakar

This paper is based on fourteen months ethnographic research into the sanitary regulation of female commercial sex work in Dakar. Female commercial sex work has been closely regulated in Senegal since in the late colonial period. Women who are registered with the state have the right to legally sell sex provided they submit to the conditions of registration: regular attendance at the state clinic and compulsory physical examinations. In this paper I examine how the "contract" between official sex workers and the state - a contract which is legally defined and partially enforced by the police - shifts towards a new set of complex relationships between an inter-university research project and the patient/trial participant, a contract codified through bioethical norms and enforced through the consent underwritten by the implication of a humanitarian association. I then use this case to discuss the ways in which collaborative, transnational research restructures local ethical understandings and relations of care.

Emmanuel Yenshu Vubo (University of Buea, Cameroon)

Emmanuel Yenshu Vubo obtained a Doctorate in Sociology from the then University of Yaoundé in 1991 and the Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches (HDR) from the Université de Franche-Comté, Besançon in 2009. He has been lecturing at the University of Buea where he has also served in several senior administrative capacities since its very early years. Recently qualified as Professeur des universités (March 2010) and a member of several learned societies, he has published a wide range of articles/book chapters and a number of books in the domain of sociology and social anthropology. He is editor notably of the book Civil Society and the Search for Development Alternatives in Cameroon (CODESRIA). His principal interests are in the epistemology of social science and the sociology of knowledge (especially as related to the production of discourses related to identity), intercommunity relations and the politics of identity, the evolution of the state in Africa, and development studies. More recently he has focused his attention on the cultural trends at work within the bicultural polity of Cameroon premised on official bilingualism in English and French and associational life in traditional society.

Euro-African in ethnicity studies and the making of identities in Cameroon: colonial and post-colonial trails

Relations between colonial and post-colonial studies in and on Cameroon have been both continuous and discontinuous. As reflected in the domains of historiography and social anthropology, this has impacted on ethnic self-representations and popular labeling. This paper hopes to examine some contrasting drives that have led to a replication of colonial redefinitions of ethnicity and how this informs current forms of competition and conflict between elites in politics. A second objective will be to investigate into the dissociation between advances in research for the most part by researchers of European origins and persisting categories of perception and analysis inherited from colonial historiography replicated by indigenous researchers in the post-colonial period, the latter trends being at the basis of prevailing perceptions of identity and political action. The hope is to demonstrate how the advances are not represented even in a local literature (text books, book chapters, journal articles) and critically analyze the intricate relations between colonial and post-colonial research by Europeans and Cameroonians. The author will demonstrate how certain research works have informed or substantially influenced the identity question either at local or national level and will work from the argument that the colonial period is a bench mark epoch in the establishment of certain categories of ethnic perception which, although substantially deconstructed at the scientific level, have survived and continue to influence social categories of perception/common sense intrusions (what Bourdieu called doxa) into social science.

Serge Aimé Coulibaly (Burkina Faso): En attendant l'indépendance

Avec Serge Aimé Coulibaly (danse), Sylvie Nawasadio (chant, ex Zap Mama), Desiré Somé (musique). D'après les textes de Véronique Tadjo (Dessine-moi (écris-moi) une indépendance… ) et Aminata Sow Fall (L'indépendance, demain il sera trop tard). Le danseur et chorégraphe burkinabé Serge Aimé Coulibaly, fondateur de la troupe « Faso Danse Théâtre » et interprète du spectacle Wolf d'Alain Platel, explore les chemins personnels qui mènent aux forces intérieures et permettent d'affronter l'avenir avec plus de dignité et d'assurance. Par ses mouvements, Coulibaly exprime une Afrique prisonnière qui ne parvient pas à se caler dans la marche du monde. Le danseur s'interroge : l'Afrique cherche-t-elle à se relever d'une chute ou est-elle couchée, immobilisée par d'incessants cauchemars ?

Paul Tiyambe Zeleza (ASA)

Dr. Paul Tiyambe Zeleza is dean of the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts, and Presidential Professor of African American Studies and History, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles. He previously was head of the Department of African American Studies and the Liberal Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Director of the Center for African Studies and Professor of History and African Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has taught at universities in the United States, Canada, Kenya, Jamaica, and Malawi, and currently holds the title of Honorary Professor at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He has also worked as a consultant for the Ford and MacArthur foundations and as an adviser to the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development. He is a past president of the African Studies Association (2008-2009)– the largest professional association in the world dedicated to the study of Africa and the African Diaspora. Dr. Zeleza's academic work has crossed traditional boundaries, ranging from history and economics to human rights and gender studies. He has published scores of articles and authored or edited more than two dozen books, several of which have won international awards including Africa's most prestigious book prize, the Noma Award for his books A Modern Economic History of Africa and Manufacturing African Studies and Crises. He also edits The Zeleza Post, an online source of news and commentary on the Pan-African world (www.zeleza.com). His most recent book is titled Barack Obama and African Diasporas: Dialogues And Dissensions (Ohio University Press, 2009).

Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan (APAD, LASDEL)

Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan (sardan@ird.ne) is Professor of anthropology at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Marseilles and Emeritus director of research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (France). He lives and works in Niger and is among the founders of LASDEL, Laboratory for Study and Research on Social Dynamics and Local Development, in Niamey). Since 1965, he has authored numerous books in French, among them: Les sociétés songhay-zarma (Niger, Mali) (1984), Les pouvoirs au village: le Bénin rural entre démocratisation et décentralisation (edited with T. Bierschenk, 1998), Courtiers en développement. Les villages africains en quête de projets (edited with T. Bierschenk et J.P. Chauveau, 2000), Une médecine inhospitalière, les difficiles relations entre soignants et soignés dans cinq capitales d'Afrique de l'Ouest (edited with Y. Jaffré, 2003). He has published two books in English: Anthropology and development (2005) and, edited with G. Blundo, Everyday corruption and the State. Citizens and public officials in Africa (2006). His last book (La rigueur du qualitatif. Les contraintes empiriques de l'interprétation socio-anthropologique, 2008) deals with methodological and epistemological issues, concerning the policy of fieldwork and the empirical constraints of anthropological interpretations.

Francis Nyamnjoh (CODESRIA) (tbc)

Francis B. Nyamnjoh joined the University of Cape Town in August 2009 from the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), where he served as Head of Publications from July 2003 to July 2009. He has taught sociology, anthropology and communication studies at universities in Cameroon and Botswana, and has researched and written extensively on Cameroon and Botswana, where he was awarded the "Senior Arts Researcher of the Year" prize for 2003. His most recent books include Negotiating an Anglophone Identity (2003), Rights and the Politics of Recognition in Africa (2004), Africa's Media, Democracy and the Politics of Belonging (2005), Insiders and Outsiders: Citizenship and Xenophobia in Contemporary Southern Africa (2006), Mobile Phones: The New Talking Drums of Everyday Africa (2009). Dr Nyamnjoh has published widely on globalization, citizenship, media and the politics of identity in Africa. He has also published seven ethnographic novels, Mind Searching (1991), The Disillusioned African (1995), A Nose for Money (2006), Souls Forgotten (2008), The Travail of Dieudonné (2008), Married but Available (2009), and Intimate Strangers (2010), a play, The Convert (2003), and a collection of short stories, Stories from Abakwa (2007). For further details visit: www.nyamnjoh.com.

Patrick Chabal (AEGIS)

Patrick Chabal, who trained in political science at Harvard, Columbia and Cambridge universities, is a Professor in King's College London. He has taught and done research in a number of (West, East and Southern) African countries as well as in the USA, France, Italy, Switzerland, India, Portugal and the UK. He is the author of a large number of articles on the history, politics, and culture of African countries and on political theory. His main book publications are: Africa: the politics of suffering and smiling (2009); Culture troubles: politics and the interpretation of meaning [ with J.-P. Daloz] (2006); A history of postcolonial Lusophone Africa [with others] (2002); Africa works: disorder as political instrument [with J.-P. Daloz] (1999); The postcolonial literature of Lusophone Africa [with others] (1996); Power in Africa: an essay in political interpretation (1992 and 1994); Political domination in Africa: reflections on the limits of power [Editor] (1986); Amílcar Cabral: revolutionary leadership and people's war (1983 and 2003).

Luc André (MRAC, Tervuren, Belgique)

Luc André, who trained in Geological sciences, is a Professor at the Free University in Brussels and Head of the Earth Sciences Department at the Royal Museum for Central Africa. It has been a visiting professor at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris and a member of the "Planet and Univers" CNRS scientific council. He has done research in Geochemistry, focusing his interests especially on isotope (bio)geochemistry tracing the geochemical cycles, the origin of life and the biomonitoring of environmental changes. Since 2008 he is delegate at the Joined Expert Group of the AU-EU partnership. He is the author or co-author of more than one hundred scientific papers published in various international peer-reviewed journals. His main recent contributions [with others] about Africa are: Mn seasonal upwellings recorded in lake Tanganyika Mussels (2007); Distinct silicon and germanium pathways in the soil-plant system: evidence from banana and horsetails (2009); Variations of 30Si and Ge/Si with weathering and biogenic input in tropical basaltic ash soils under monoculture (2010); Chemical weathering intensity in the Congo Basin traced by silicon isotopes in rivers (2010) Coupled silicon-oxygen isotopic evidences for the origin of silicification in mafic volcanic rocks of the Barberton Greenstone Belt (2010) .

Le partenariat Europe-Afrique pour la science: état des lieux, opportunités et perspectives

Le sommet UE-Afrique de Lisbonne (décembre 2007) a marqué le début d'une ère nouvelle dans les relations entre les deux continents. Il a vu la mise en place d'un partenariat fondé sur les principes de l'égalité et de l'appropriation par l'Afrique de la gestion des priorités de la coopération. Si la signature tardive des accords de Lisbonne en décembre 2009 a ralenti l'initiation de la première phase de l'action (2008-2010), il faut reconnaître que parmi les 8 groupes d'actions prioritaires, c'est sans doute celles qui concernent la « Science, la société de l'information et l'espace » qui ont progressé le plus significativement. Ceci résulte du dépôt de 19 projets stratégiques et prioritaires dès septembre 2008 par la Commission de l'Union Africaine. Plusieurs de ces projets ont été concrétisés, d'autres sont en cours de réalisation. Les succès et les échecs de la première phase du P8 servent maintenant de base à la définition de nouvelles priorités stratégiques pour la seconde phase (2011-13) qui sera négociée à Syrte les 29 et 30 novembre 2010. Après un état des lieux des acquis tangibles de la première phase et des priorités de la seconde, on insistera sur l'importance de renforcer les synergies entre le partenariat P8 et les actions de la coopération multilatérale des états membres et des grandes agences internationales (e.g. Unesco,…). Des exemples de synergies possibles seront décrits pour le domaine des Sciences de la Terre, de l'environnement et du climat.

Geert Castryck (University of Leipzig, Centre for Area Studies, Leipzig)

Geert Castryck is post-doctoral researcher at the Centre for Area Studies and the Institut für Afrikanistik of the Universität Leipzig. He studied history and Oriental Studies at Ghent University and did a doctorate on the Muslim communities of colonial Bujumbura. His current research focuses on the political meanings of leisure and religion in late- and post-colonial East Africa. Besides he has written on ethno-religious minorities, colonial histories and memories, and remembrance and peace education.

Post-Col. Area Studies in Germany: On the Tensions between Integration and Distinction

In 2008 a programme to reinforce area studies in Germany was introduced by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The need for profound knowledge about other regions in a globalizing world, and in particular the demand for immediately applicable expertise by German political and economic actors, are put alongside academic and institutional needs for collaboration between disciplines, linking research centres and crossing regional divisions. In this paper I will reflect on how these (geo)political and epistemological aims are combined, and to what extent they are essentially interrelated. I will mainly draw on my experiences at the Centre for Area Studies in Leipzig, which is embedded in the regional institutes of the university and endeavours to bridge both regional and disciplinary boundaries. Against the backdrop of Colonialism, Cold War and its sundry Post-'s some itches of Humanities, Social Sciences and Area Studies will be scratched. What are the history, epistemology and politics of the distinctions between them? What characterizes Area Studies in general, and African Studies therein? How are areas defined and are they defined differently in Germany? Is it possible to work both trans-regionally and trans-disciplinary without putting yourself at the margins of academia? What would be the globalizing logic and the hegemonic consequences of merging Area Studies into Global Studies? And finally, wherein lies the difference between the Post-Cold War proclamation of 'The End of History' and the Post-Colonial exposure of the 'denial of history'? The implications of these questions will be illustrated using a challenging ongoing project.

Janet Roitman (Institute for Public Knowledge, New York University)

Janet Roitman has conducted extensive research in Central Africa, focusing specifically on the borders of Cameroon, Nigeria, the Central African Republic and Chad. Her book, Fiscal Disobedience: An Anthropology of Economic Regulation in Central Africa (Princeton University Press, 2005), is an analysis of the unregulated commerce that transpires on those borders. This research inquires into emergent forms of economic regulation in the region of the Chad Basin and considers consequential transformations in the nature of fiscal relations and citizenship. More generally, her research covers topics of political economy, the anthropology of value, and emergent forms of the political. Roitman has served as an instructor at the Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques de Paris. She is a research fellow with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and an associate member of the Institut Marcel-Mauss (CNRS-EHESS) in Paris. Since 2007, she has been teaching in the anthropology department at the New School for Social Research in New York. Her collaboration with the Institute Marcel Mauss and The New School centers upon a trans-Atlantic and interdisciplinary research project entitled "New Perspectives on Critique in the Social Sciences," which reviews the problematic status of critical theory. In the context of this work, Roitman is currently devising a personal research project entitled "The Stakes of Crisis," which inquires into the status of the concept of crisis in the social sciences. To this end, she has conducted seminars in Anthropology and International Affairs at the New School for Social Research from 2007-2010. In Fall 2010, she will be a research fellow at the Institute for Public Knowledge, New York University.

Africa: beyond crisis

How one might think Africa otherwise than under the sign of "crisis" ? This question will be surmised through a review of the notion of "crisis" as it is presently mobilized in social science narratives across the disciplines. The concept of crisis -- in the sense of political crisis or economic crisis -- has come to serve as both a metaphor and placeholder in academic and popular discourse. It is posited as a way of characterizing "history" itself and is claimed to even serve as a means to access the production of significance or meaning in history. Devoid of heuristic power, "crisis" is a metaphor that is symptomatic of the insufficiencies inherent to contemporary analytics of both politics and economic life. Africa, in particular, is now represented under the sign of crisis, which does little to explain current configurations of political economy on the continent, entailing various modes of producing value and validating modes of regulation, or livelihoods.

Filip De Boeck

As the coordinator of the Institute for Anthropological Research in Africa (IARA), a Research Unit of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Leuven, Professor Filip De Boeck (° Antwerp, 1961) is actively involved in teaching, promoting, coordinating and supervising research in and on Africa. Book publications include Kinshasa. Tales of the Invisible City (2004), and Makers and Breakers. Children and Youth in Postcolonial Africa (2005). Recently he also directed the documentary film Cemetery State (2010), about a graveyard in Kinshasa.

Filip De Boeck

As the coordinator of the Institute for Anthropological Research in Africa (IARA), a Research Unit of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Leuven, Professor Filip De Boeck (° Antwerp, 1961) is actively involved in teaching, promoting, coordinating and supervising research in and on Africa. Book publications include Kinshasa. Tales of the Invisible City (2004), and Makers and Breakers. Children and Youth in Postcolonial Africa (2005). Recently he also directed the documentary film Cemetery State (2010), about a graveyard in Kinshasa.

Undisciplining science: Congo, literature and the arts

If, as Achille Mbembe states, the main challenge for the Humanities consists in rethinking the ways one may write about the world from an African perspective, and about the place of Africa in that world, the question then becomes how to do that? Africa today is not only a vast political, economical, moral or ethical project, but it is also, and perhaps predominantly so, an aesthetic project as well. How can the social sciences take that fact into account, how can it expand its analytical framework to account for this, and what is there to learn from the arts in that respect? Simultaneously, in what ways may the social sciences figure as a source of inspiration for African artists and cultural actors? These and other related questions will be addressed during this round table.

Sarah De Mul

Sarah De Mul is a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO-Vlaanderen) in the Department of Literary Studies at the University of Leuven. Her publications and research interests are in the field of comparative postcolonial studies, with a particular focus on gender and colonial memory in Neerlandophone and Anglophone literature. She is co-editor of Commitment and Complicity in Cultural Theory and Practice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and co-author of a Dutch-language book on multiculturalism in Flanders (Meulenhoff-Manteau, 2009). Her monograph Colonial Memory. Contemporary Women's Travel Writing in Britain and the Netherlands is forthcoming in Spring 2011 (Amsterdam UP). Together with Elleke Boehmer, she is also preparing an edited volume which is provisionally entitled The Postcolonial Low Countries: Literature, Colonialism, and Multiculturalism for Lexington Books.

Noémi Tousignant

Noémi Tousignant is a research fellow with the Martin Okonji Medical Humanities Research Group at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Her current project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, is on the contemporary history of toxicology in Senegal. It investigates two intersecting transformations; in the practice of Senegalese toxicological expertise, and the social lives of toxic substances in Senegal. She is also interested in medical research, urban history and the anthropology of memory in Africa. She has previously worked on Senegalese pharmacists, the history of pharmaceuticals in colonial and postcolonial contexts, and the history of pain measurement.

Remembering Les Temps Toubab: of capacity, collaboration and the pleasures of the laboratory

Collaborations with Europeans are often central in African scientists' accounts of their work. Focusing on stories told by the staff of the Toxicology and Analytical Chemistry Laboratory of Dakar's Cheikh Anta Diop University, this paper explores how memories of collaboration interact with expressions of scientific capacity. Anecdotes of scientific conviviality, airplane trips with frozen samples and gifts of chromatographs mark histories of friendship, teamwork and exchange; they also tell of changing capacities to produce knowledge. Collaboration is not simply a source of infrastructure and expertise; collaborating and generating knowledge are linked sensory and relational experiences, described as the changing rhythms, trajectories, pleasures and practices of scientific research. A former technician associates temps toubab, the time when the laboratory was headed by French lecturers, with skilled and creative manual analysis. Younger scientists remember times of methodological innovation during visits –as students or visiting scholars- to overseas laboratories. In Senegal, sampling now dominates the experience of research, generating nostalgia for the laboratories of temps toubab and of overseas. Yet, although their work in Senegal has become less technically sophisticated, scientists claim a growing engagement with toxic threats to Senegalese lives and livelihoods. By making creative use of old and new collaborative links in response to the changing involvement of the Senegalese State in university budgets, environmental regulation and quality control, laboratory staff have maintained abilities to define and act upon local social and scientific problems. Their experiences reveal intersections between histories of scientific exchange, laboratory technologies and the governance of health research and risk in Senegal.

Institutional trajectories: African-European networks & associations

Western historiography identifies the start of modernity, of which the scientific revolution is a defining aspect, with Europeans' "discovery", "exploration" and subsequent exploitation and colonization of other continents, including Africa, while largely ignoring the extent to which this modernity was crafted in Europe's overseas territories and through Europeans' interactions with inhabitants of other continents. Europe has long 'thrived on forgetting Africa, that is, refusing to recognize "traditional" Africa's contemporaneity' (Fabian), i.e. its own modern (counter)cultures (Gilroy). Have European and African scientists achieved more equal and equitable relations off late and are true African-European partnerships possible? To what extent are science education and practice in Africa still influenced by passed unequal relations between colonisers and colonised? What are the relations between science and development aid? These and other questions will be addressed during this round table.

Bambi Ceuppens

Bambi Ceuppens holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of St Andrews (Scotland) and is a Senior Researcher at the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren in Belgium. She is the curator of the exhibition "Indépendance! Congolese Stories about Fifty Years of Independence" in the RMCA, created at the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the independence of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Her major research interests are Congolese colonial history and popular culture, the Congolese diaspora in Belgium and colonial heritage and autochthony in Belgium.

Bambi Ceuppens

Bambi Ceuppens holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of St Andrews (Scotland) and is a Senior Researcher at the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren in Belgium. She is the curator of the exhibition "Indépendance! Congolese Stories about Fifty Years of Independence" in the RMCA, created at the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the independence of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Her major research interests are Congolese colonial history and popular culture, the Congolese diaspora in Belgium and colonial heritage and autochthony in Belgium.

Faustin Linyekula

Danseur, chorégraphe, Faustin Linyekula a toujours un livre en tête, un chemin à prendre, un sac tout juste défait à refaire, une histoire à raconter, une ruine à reconstruire… entre Kisangani où il vit aujourd'hui au Nord-Est de la République Démocratique du Congo (ex Zaire, ex Congo Belge, ex état indépendant du Congo…), Kinshasa, Paris et le monde… Tout commence à Kisangani avec une bande d'amis férus de théâtre, emmenés par un grand frère, Kabako, qui mourra quelques années plus tard à la frontière de l'Ouganda d'une maladie si anachronique en cette fin de XXe siècle qu'elle n'ose plus guère dire son nom, la peste…

En 1993, Faustin quitte un pays de fin de règne, celui de Mobutu, et de début de chaos et s'installe à Nairobi, débutent les allers et retours entre l'Ouganda, le Rwanda et le Kenya. En 1997, il fonde avec Opiyo Okach et la danseuse Afrah Tenambergen la première compagnie de danse contemporaine au Kenya, la compagnie Gàara. Leur première création, Cleansing, exploration des symboliques du nettoyage et de la purification, est primée aux Rencontres chorégraphiques africaines de Luanda en 1998. Malgré le succès, Faustin quittera la compagnie quelques mois plus tard pour reprendre la route entre la France, l'Afrique du Sud, la Réunion et la Slovénie. Accueilli au Festival Tanzwochen de Vienne en 2000, il présente Tales off the Mud Wall en collaboration avec le chorégraphe sud-africain Gregory Maqoma.

En 1993, Faustin quitte un pays de fin de règne, celui de Mobutu, et de début de chaos et s'installe à Nairobi, débutent les allers et retours entre l'Ouganda, le Rwanda et le Kenya. En 1997, il fonde avec Opiyo Okach et la danseuse Afrah Tenambergen la première compagnie de danse contemporaine au Kenya, la compagnie Gàara. Leur première création, Cleansing, exploration des symboliques du nettoyage et de la purification, est primée aux Rencontres chorégraphiques africaines de Luanda en 1998. Malgré le succès, Faustin quittera la compagnie quelques mois plus tard pour reprendre la route entre la France, l'Afrique du Sud, la Réunion et la Slovénie. Accueilli au Festival Tanzwochen de Vienne en 2000, il présente Tales off the Mud Wall en collaboration avec le chorégraphe sud-africain Gregory Maqoma.

Suivent Triptyque sans titre (2002), Spectacularly Empty II (2003), recréation pour boîte noire de la pièce de 2001, Radio Okapi (2003-04), performance mêlant radio en direct et artistes invités, chaque soir différents, Le Festival des mensonges (2005-06), veillée autour de la petite et de la grande histoire du Congo et The Dialogue Series: iii. Dinozord (2006). Ces deux dernières pièces sont invitées au Festival d'Avignon 07 (qui accueille pour la première fois un auteur d'Afrique subsaharienne).

En 2007, Faustin travaille sur la mise en scène d'un texte de Marie-Louise Bibish Mumbu La Fratrie errante, présenté à Paris et à Limoges (2007) et dans sept villes d'Afrique centrale (octobre-novembre 08). En 2009, il a mis en scène pour la Comédie Française (Studio Théâtre) et le Théâtre de Gennevilliers Bérénice de Jean Racine. Une matière qui sert de départ à sa prochaine création Pour en finir avec Bérénice qui sera présentée au CNDC d'Angers / Théâtre du Quai en mai, puis reprise en juillet 2010 aux Carmes à Avignon.

Click here for part 2

Faustin Linyekula: part 2

La même année, il présente au Kunstenfestivaldesarts de more more more… future, pièce pour trois danseurs et cinq musiciens autour du ndombolo, la pop congolaise. La pièce a depuis été reprise à Hanovre, Kinshasa, Ostende, Zurich, Berlin, Groningen, Rotterdam puis Créteil (dans le cadre du Festival d'Automne), Toulon, Maubeuge et bientôt Strasbourg, Montpellier et Caen pour la France, ainsi qu'à Lisbonne....

2009 aura été marquée par une belle expérience, et rare dans le parcours de Faustin, d'interprète pour Raimund Hoghe, Sans-titre aura été vu à Montpellier, Münster, Gennevilliers dans le cadre du Festival d'automne et Saint-Nazaire…

À côté des Studios Kabako, Faustin Linyekula crée en janvier 2003 une pièce pour six danseurs de hip-hop, commande du Festival Suresnes Cités Danse, Telle une ombre gravée dans la poussière et imagine pour Sylvain Prunenec un solo-miroir dans le cadre du Vif du sujet-Festival d'Avignon 2003, Si c'est un nègre / autoportrait.

En 2005, le Centre national de la danse lui confie une Carte blanche : naît alors Le Cargo avec à son bord une dizaine de compagnies de six pays d'Afrique, soit une trentaine d'artistes qui montrent leur travail à Paris, souvent pour la première fois. Une carte blanche réitérée en 2008 au KVS Theater à Bruxelles avec des artistes d'Afrique, mais aussi d'Europe, danseurs, performeurs et musiciens…

Faustin enseigne régulièrement en Afrique, aux États-Unis et en Europe (Parts / Bruxelles, CNDC / Angers, Impulstanz / Vienne…). En 2006-07, il participe à un groupe de réflexion, The Africa Centre, avec une dizaine d'autres artistes et intellectuels africains autour de la création d'un centre d'art près du Cap (Afrique du Sud). En 2007, il reçoit le premier prix de la Fondation Prince Claus pour la culture et le développement.

Depuis 2006, Faustin inscrit son travail et sa démarche dans la ville de Kisangani et œuvre à la mise en place un réseau de trois centres culturels – un centre de résidence / laboratoire dont les fondations ont débuté en août 010, un centre de diffusion et un lie citoyen, ouvert aux différentes communautés – dans différentes communes de la ville, autour de démarches artistiques liées au spectacle vivant et à l'audiovisuel… Ont été mis en place des ateliers de formation (théâtre, danse, cinéma, production culturelle…), plusieurs artistes de la ville ont également été accompagnés financièrement et techniquement dans la production de leur propre travail.