Agenzia Fides

Abidjan (Agenzia Fides) - "The time has come in Africa to say no to cultural leveling, a consequence of globalization," said Cardinal Adrien Sarr, Archbishop of Dakar (Senegal) and First Vice President of the Symposium of the Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM/SCEAM), in the introductory report to the management Committee of the Forum "Faith, culture and development" held in Abidjan (Ivory Coast) from 10 to 11 July. The meeting was intended to prepare the Seminar "Culture and Development in Africa" to be held in November 2012 in Dar-es-Salaam, in Tanzania, organized by SECAM/SCEAM in collaboration with the Pontifical Council for Culture.
The need to create a forum dedicated to "Culture and Development in Africa" had emerged from the recommendation of a meeting held in Abidjan in 2010 by the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples and the Pontifical Council for Culture. An urgency that was reiterated by Cardinal Sarr, who stressed: "It is time to rediscover the richness of African cultures, and translate into constant, individual and community behavior, and at all social levels, the values of solidarity, respect for the sanctity of life, the meaning of the child, the woman, the elderly, the family, which are carried by our cultures. Now is the time to really promote African culture, without complex of inferiority or superiority. It is time to have the audacity to refuse a development that does not take into account our culture." (L.M.) (Agenzia Fides 12/7/2012)