MORONI, COMOROS — The French territory of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean suffered extensive damage from Tropical Cyclone Chido, officials said Saturday, as the storm roared toward the east coast of the African continent.

Chido brought winds in excess of 220 kilometers per hour, according to the French weather service, ripping metal roofs off houses in Mayotte, which has a population of just over 300,000 spread over two main islands. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

“Our island is being hit by the most violent and destructive cyclone since 1934. Many of us have lost everything,” Mayotte Prefect Francois-Xavier Bieuville said in a Facebook post Saturday. He said the highest alert had been lifted so that rescuers can help after the worst of the cyclone had passed.

Mayotte is still under red alert for the ordinary population, and people were asked to “remain confined in a solid shelter,” Bieuville said. Only emergency and security services were allowed to go out.

French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said Mayotte had been hit hard. “The damages already appear to be extensive,” he said on X. “State and local emergency services are fully mobilized.”

Local broadcaster Mayotte la 1ere said that thousands of homes were without power, tin huts and other small structures had been blown away and many trees had been blown over.

Retailleau said 110 rescuers and firefighters sent to Mayotte from France and the nearby territory of Reunion have been deployed and an additional reinforcement of 140 people will be sent on Sunday.

The nation of Comoros, a group of islands north of Mayotte, also was being battered by Chido and the highest red alert had been announced in some areas. Authorities said they were concerned for a group of 11 fishermen who had gone out to sea on Monday and had not been heard from.

Comoros authorities have ordered all ships to remain anchored in harbors and have closed the main airport and government offices. Schools were ordered closed on Friday so that people could prepare for the cyclone.

Chido was expected to continue its eastern trajectory and hit Mozambique on the African mainland late Saturday or early Sunday, forecasters said. Mozambique’s disaster agency has warned that 2.5 million people might be affected in the northern provinces of Cabo Delgado and Nampula.

Further inland, landlocked Malawi and Zimbabwe were preparing. Malawi’s Department of Disaster Management Affairs said it was expecting flooding in some parts and urgently advised some people to move to higher ground. In Zimbabwe, authorities said some people should prepare for evacuation.

December through to March is cyclone season in the southeastern Indian Ocean, and southern Africa has been pummeled by a series of strong ones in recent years.

Cyclone Idai in 2019 killed more than 1,300 people in Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe. Cyclone Freddy left more than 1,000 dead across several countries last year.

The cyclones bring the risk of flooding and landslides, but also stagnant pools of water may later spark deadly outbreaks of the waterborne cholera disease — as happened in the aftermath of Idai — as well as dengue fever and malaria.

Studies say the cyclones are getting worse because of climate change. They can leave poor countries in southern Africa, which contribute a tiny amount to climate change, having to deal with large humanitarian crises.
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MOGADISHU, SOMALIA/WASHINGTON — Expressing a renewed desire to return to their homeland, some Syrian refugees residing Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, are hopeful that recent developments, including the ousting of the Assad family regime that brutally ruled Syria for 53 years, might signal a safer future in Syria.

Since the Syrian civil war broke out more than a decade ago, Syrians have fled to countries in the Middle East and Europe, as well as to African countries that have been grappling with instability.

Many Syrian refugees found themselves in Somalia, a war-torn nation in the Horn of Africa that has faced terrorist attacks, piracy and humanitarian crises.

On Wednesday, dozens of Syrian refugees in Mogadishu staged a demonstration marked with emotional speeches to celebrate the fall of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

Holding placards that read “We want to go home” and “Syria awaits us,” the demonstrators expressed their longing for peace and stability in their homeland.

Some of them shared their stories with VOA.

“We are victorious because of the free Syrian army. Those in control [Syrian rebels] now are God-abiding people, not the ousted and strayed al-Assad,” said Hussein Hikmat, a refugee from Damascus. “Here, Somalis welcomed us and supported us, but we will go back to our country.”

Ali Al-Zahir, who fled from Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, lost his wife and three children in the Syrian war. He arrived in Mogadishu in hopes of keeping his two surviving children safe.

“I am your brother from Aleppo, a city that suffered at the hands of al-Assad and his predator regime. Syria is free today, and free soldiers control it. I swear to God I want to return to my country,” he said, in tears, reflecting on his deep desire to reunite with his homeland.

Syrian refugee Khadija Mohamed sells perfumes and tusbah, prayer beads used in Islamic practices, in Mogadishu. While she is hopeful about returning to Syria, she acknowledges the challenges her impoverished family faces.

“The situation in Syria is good. Bashar al-Assad is gone, and now Syria is in safe hands,” Mohamed said. “I have lived in Somalia for two years with my husband and kids. We want to return, but our current situation does not allow us to do so.” 

Fatima Mohamed, another refugee, shared a cautious outlook.

“The situation in Syria is improving, and many places are free,” she said. “It is not entirely stable yet. We hear that some of the Syrian prisoners arrested by the Assad regime are still in underground jails,” she added, pointing out that conditions would need to be less volatile for her to consider returning home.

Like Fatima Mohamed, many Syrian refugees remain cautious despite their longing to return home.

Somali officials who spoke at the demonstrations have acknowledged the refugees’ wishes and said they were working with international organizations to assess the situation in Syria and facilitate safe returns.

There is no official data on the number of Syrian refugees living in Somalia, but officials estimate it to be in the thousands.

Syrians who found refuge in Somalia said the two countries’ history of amicable relations drove them.

The Syrians say Somalis’ friendliness toward refugees and Somalia’s lack of visa restrictions also drew them to Mogadishu and other major cities in the country.

In return, the Syrian refugees, which include doctors, nurses, engineers, chefs, technicians, and teachers among their ranks, have enriched Somalia culturally and economically because of the knowledge and skillsets they brought with them.

This story originated in VOA’s Somali Service.  
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ABUJA, NIGERIA — The World Health Organization (WHO) and public health experts are calling for increased political commitment and funding to fight malaria, especially in endemic regions like Africa. This week’s release of the 2024 World Malaria Report by the WHO said there were 11 million more malaria cases compared to the previous year and that Ethiopia and Nigeria recorded their highest death tolls from the disease since 2015.

According to Wednesday’s report, there were 263 million cases of the mosquito-borne disease and nearly 600,000 deaths worldwide last year.

The report indicates global malaria cases grew by about 11 million compared to the year prior while fatalities remained nearly the same.

The WHO report said Africa accounted for 95% of global malaria deaths. Most of the victims were children under 5 years of age.

Dr. Kehinde Ajayi, an expert on malaria epidemiology and control, said one issue is that since 2020, most developing nations have had a shortage of resources to combat the disease.

“Some of the resources like insecticide-treated nets and also funding towards the malaria control programs have been hampered because of … COVID-19 and the economic imbalance in developing countries,” Ajayi said.

Ajayi said climate change and declining effectiveness of anti-malaria drugs are threatening progress.

Nigeria bears the world’s highest burden of malaria with more than 27% of global malaria cases and 31% of deaths.

But the WHO report also showed some progress — estimating that about 2.2 billion cases of malaria and 12.7 million deaths were averted globally since 2000.

Ajayi said increased government funding for malaria interventions could change things.

“Mosquitoes thrive very well under temperatures that are more than 19 degrees Celsius, and the climate change has made [that] possible,” Ajayi said. “Also, the plasmodium parasite has gained a lot of resistance against malaria drugs. Also, the government needs to invest more in our health sector. Government also needs to fund research that will help us in discovering indigenous drugs.”

The WHO report said only about half of the $8.7 billion target for malaria intervention last year was achieved.

In Nigeria, spending on health care is about 4% of the national budget, much lower than the 15% agreed upon by the African Union in 2001 — in the so-called Abuja Declaration.

Authorities have pledged to improve spending on health. On Thursday, Nigeria signed a deal to promote local production of test kits for HIV and malaria.

Last week, Nigeria launched its malaria vaccination campaign — becoming the latest African country to provide malaria vaccines to young children.

There are now 17 countries giving new malaria vaccines.
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nairobi, kenya — The Chinese Embassy in Kenya says it has begun training Kenyan journalists to promote professionalism and integrity. But press advocates say the initiative is ironic as China sits close to the bottom in a key press freedom ranking for 2024.

Kenyan news anchor and reporter Allan Aoko is one of dozens of reporters and editors at the state-run Kenya Broadcasting Corporation who recently participated in a Chinese Embassy-sponsored media course in Nairobi. The course touched on a range of journalism topics.

”It was very critical for me to understand the kind of tools that we should be using in artificial intelligence as a reporter using those tools to disseminate the news,” he said. “It was important for me to understand the details.”

Some 70 journalists participated in the training.

Speaking at the opening of the training session, the Chinese Embassy’s deputy ambassador to Kenya, Zhang Zhizhong, talked about the importance of the role of journalism in a nation.

”Journalists and reporters, you are the core of media and also the key factor in the success of media in conveying information and shaping perceptions and leading a country or nation into the correct direction,” Zhang said.

Studies by independent journalist advocacy groups have documented how China uses such partnerships to try to foster more positive coverage, including via press junkets, sponsorships and so-called career development opportunities to nurture better media relations. It has also offered tightly controlled press trips to Xinjiang to try to counter investigative reporting that has exposed its mass detentions and abuses in the region.

As the world’s leading jailer of journalists, China is considered one of the most censored countries in the world, using a combination of censorship, surveillance and legal threats to prevent free expression. The country ranks 172nd out of 180 on the Press Freedom Index, where 1 reflects the best media environment.

Aleksandra Bielakowska works for Reporters Without Borders, which compiles the index. She said that  “inside their country, Beijing is conducting a full-scale campaign against independent voices, which is also independent journalists. In the past 10 years, we could see some space for independent journalism in China. The investigative journalists have almost died out.”

The Kenyan national broadcaster’s editor-in-chief, Simon Maina, told VOA that because resources are limited, accepting help from China may be inevitable. But Maina said his newsroom’s editorial decisions are free of China’s influence.

”The sponsorship they have given us does not interfere with our editorial policy,” Maina said. “Our editorial policy still stands, so it has nothing to do with how they operate in their country.”

A 2021 report by the International Federation of Journalists found that Beijing’s strategy was to target journalists in developing countries, such as in Africa, where it has deep financial interests. The report further showed that three quarters of African respondents said they viewed cooperation with Chinese entities as positive, especially where there was not enough media infrastructure.  

Kenyan foreign policy professor Noah Midamba said that even with Beijing’s efforts and investments in Africa, the continent’s mass media are still aligned with the West because of the language barrier with China.

”What is lagging for the Chinese is their information has not penetrated to the people in the streets, people in the rural areas and the most populous [regions] in Africa, as most Africans don’t understand Chinese,” he said.

At the same time, what has made the headlines is Kenya’s participation in China’s global infrastructure development project called the Belt and Road Initiative – a partnership many economists say has led the country into a debt trap.
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Russia has been pushing disinformation campaigns targeting U.S. health campaigns in Africa. Egountchi Behanzin, a French Togolese activist, has been exposed in several investigations for discrediting U.S. and Western health campaigns in favor of Russia.
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MARONDERA, ZIMBABWE — Zimbabwean health officials said Tuesday they aim to eliminate HIV/AIDS as a public health threat by 2030, crediting the United States with making such progress possible through aid and support.

U.S. Ambassador to Zimbabwe Pamela Tremont and officials from PEPFAR and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention toured the HIV services area at Marondera Hospital, located some 70 kilometers east of Harare, the Zimbabwe capital, where HIV/AIDS once sickened thousands.

Speaking to journalists afterward, Dr. Delight Madoro, a district medical officer in Mashonaland East province, said PEPFAR — or the U.S. Presidential Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief — enabled Zimbabwe to combat the epidemic with strategies such as blood-based self-testing and PrEP, which stands for pre-exposure prophylaxis.

“And after maybe you test positive, there are staff and support … at the facilities to help link you to other HIV services,” Madoro said.

“There is a lot that is happening on the ground in terms of [the] fight against HIV through the support that we are getting from PEPFAR,” he continued. “And in terms of human resources, we’re getting more staff. This means our clients are going to have more time with clinicians, so that we become thorough, and we get thorough with our treatment.

“So, in a nutshell, I can say the support that we have been getting from PEPFAR is of paramount importance,” he said.

Tremont said the U.S. was committed to help fight the HIV epidemic in Zimbabwe.

“We’ve made huge progress since 2006,” she said. “The number of deaths from HIV has fallen 80%, and that is something I think we should all be very proud of.”

Tremont mentioned that the U.S. provided antiretroviral treatments and many health care workers at clinics and hospitals around Zimbabwe.

“It’s great to see all that in action today and to see the dedication and stubbornness of the health care workers reaching down to those HIV patients who are scared and reluctant to undertake treatment,” she said. “Thank you to the health care workers. You are our heroes in all this.”

Haddi Cham, the Centers for Disease Control’s Zimbabwe HIV services branch chief, said the PEPFAR program made the HIV facility at Marondera Hospital possible.

“We have been supporting this facility for many, many years now, and we are really grateful for the collaboration with all the key stakeholders. Through that strong collaboration, we are able to realize these results,” Cham said.

Zimbabwe is one of the countries hit hardest by HIV/AIDS, especially before 1999, when authorities introduced an AIDS levy — a 3% tax on income and business profits that is used by the National AIDS Council for programs to combat the spread of the pandemic.

Data indicate the prevalence of HIV among adults ages 15 to 49 in Zimbabwe declined from 12.7% in 2019 to 10.5% in 2023.
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A new initiative is reshaping the lives of smallholder farmers and students in Malawi. The Home-Grown School Feeding Program, championed by the U.N. World Food Program, is bridging the gap between agriculture and public primary schools, resulting in improved nutrition for students and economic empowerment for farmers. Lameck Masina reports from Blantyre.
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In an attempt to end polarization in Zimbabwe’s media, an organization is hosting sports events for journalists from the privately owned and state-run media. Columbus Mavhunga joins the inaugural event in Harare, where he files this report.
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In the early evening of November 11, after four days at sea, the passengers of two boats carrying 75 Somali migrants spotted distant lights and a hill. They could hear the muezzin calling for the Maghreb, Muslim evening prayers. Their destination, Mayotte, a French island in the Indian Ocean, was finally in sight.

The lead skipper confirmed what they saw and heard — they were close to shore. However, he expressed a concern. He said he feared that gangsters on the beach might attack them. He decided to stop the boats and informed the passengers they would spend the night at sea and go ashore in the morning, according to a Swahili-speaking migrant who served as the interpreter.

Little did the migrants know their journey, so close to a successful ending, was about to descend into unspeakable horror.

The skippers, who were also human traffickers, had been with the passengers since November 7, when they set off in the two boats from a mothership anchored off Kenya’s southern coast, near Mombasa.

The skippers’ role was to take Somalis on the final leg of their journey to Mayotte, the French island off the northwest coast of Madagascar that has recently become a magnet for asylum seekers hoping to reach Europe.

However, the skippers were not happy with their compensation. The smuggler told the interpreter that he had been contracted to transport 40 people, but now there were 75.  “The money I was given is not enough,” he complained, according to boat passenger Luul Osman Mohamed, who overheard the conversation. The smuggler wanted the passengers to hand over more.

Soon after, the smuggler briefly turned the boat’s engine on, revved it in the water, and then shut it off again, perhaps as a tease or a warning to the passengers. The other boat did the same.

“Sometimes they moved farther out to sea, and other times they came closer to shore,” Luul told VOA’s Horn of Africa Service.  But after two rounds of this, she said, “the engine on the other second boat broke down. Then, our engine failed too.”

That night, the migrants and the two smugglers spent the night adrift on the two boats, just off the coast.

One boat carried 37 people, mostly women and two children — a 2-year-old boy and an 8-year-old girl — while the second boat carried 38 passengers.

November 12

Early the next morning, two men rendezvoused with the ships in a boat, seemingly responding to phone calls made by the smugglers. The first smuggler announced that he would leave with the men to repair his boat’s engine. He never returned.

The passengers and the second smuggler remained stranded. The two boats drifted aimlessly in the open sea under the scorching sun, with no shelter to protect them. Desperate to cool off, the passengers resorted to splashing seawater on themselves.

November 13

The waves rocked the boats back and forth, but the passengers managed to sleep peacefully. One challenge, however, was that they couldn’t communicate with the second smuggler, as he spoke a language they didn’t understand. This became a minor issue compared to what lay ahead.

The next morning, fishermen arrived and communicated with the second smuggler. Together, they managed to repair the engine on the second boat.

They agreed the boat with the working engine would tow the other one, and it seemed to work at first. As the engine roared to life, they began moving — only in the wrong direction, further out to sea. For some reason, the skipper steered toward Comoros instead of Mayotte.

They continued for three to five hours, Luul recalls, until the only working engine failed once again.

“After taking us deep into the sea, he took the navigation system with him and left on the fishing boat,” Luul said. The second skipper disappeared and never returned.

“When the smugglers were with us, we felt calm. They were with us, and whatever happened to them, we knew would happen to us,” said Anas Ibrahim Abdi, 21. Now, with both smugglers gone, the migrants were at the mercy of the sea and the elements.

November 14

The 75 migrants drifted in the ocean. They had run out of the dates, fried chicken and bread they had received from the mothership a week earlier. The boats and the migrants were stranded in no-man’s sea, not knowing where to go — or how.

Passengers tied the two boats together, to stay connected, says Luul.  But when strong waves battered the vessels, they untied the ropes, fearing that if one boat were to sink, the other would go down, too.

About six men who knew how to swim came over to the women’s boat, just in case there was an accident.

Anas, who was in the first boat, moved the other way. “My energy was low, I was sick. Because lots of people come on board, it was not balanced, so I moved to the other boat,” he says.

For three days, the passengers tried to make the boats move, without success. During these days the first death occurred — a young man who was a diabetic.

“We read Fatiha for him. He died in an evening,” Anas said.

Sometimes, the waves would bring the passengers close to land, only to drag them back to sea.  After 10 days adrift, another passenger, a woman named Fatima, passed away.

“It was hot, she was hungry. She was sitting at the front. Her brother was with her. She was shocked for about two days before she died,” Luul said.

The following day, another passenger died — the 2-year-old boy.

“We had milk for him. When we mix milk with sea water he refuses. When he sucks milk from his mother she faints, she finds it hard to breathe because she has not eaten. Later we started to mix milk with her urine… That kept him alive for two days,” says Luul.

Days later the boy’s mother died, too.

As one passenger after another died from hunger and thirst, others suffered hallucinations. Luul says her friend Fathi was one of them. “She was saying this is Lido beach, let us get off the boat, let us take Bajaj [rickshaw],” she says. “She was ripping off her clothes.”

At times, a swarm of fish hit the boats. Inventive passengers used their sarongs to catch a few, giving them some welcome nutrition.

“We were also eating green grass, salty, that was brought by the waves from the beach,” Luul said.

The only other protein came from a bird that came hovering over a body on the boat. It was caught and eaten too.

November 23

On the first boat, 17 people died, 14 of them women. Ten others died on the second boat. One boy, realizing the boat was going nowhere, jumped into the water, confident in his ability to swim. He was seen swimming away, but moments later, the waves carried him in the opposite direction. He was never seen again.

The last three days, as everyone lost energy, the boats moved swiftly, carried by strong winds. Rain gave the drifting migrants some desperately needed water, but most were losing hope of survival.

Then, after a dark night with no moon, Anas recalls, “At dawn, there was light, we saw the mountain and then a coastline.”

Madagascar. After 16 days at sea, the migrants had finally reached land. The migrants were able to guide the boats close to shore and staggered onto the beach.

Nearby fisherman shied away at first, Anas said. Then they saw the bodies in the boats.

“They were moved. They gave us water, rice and fruits,” Luul said.

The fishermen made a phone call. Another boat came. They tied their boat to the migrants’ and pulled them onto the beach.

“They were good people, they helped us, they changed our clothes, they gave us warm water to get our energy,” Luul said.

The migrants were transferred to authorities in Madagascar.

Luul, the 31-year-old mother of five, was the only person from her family on the boat. She says she survived because “everyone has their time to die” — and this wasn’t hers, although she felt it was close.

“I was thirsty, I was hungry; my voice has changed, the last day my throat was not opening, it was swollen. I had lots of spots, and from sitting on the boat. I was weak,” she said.

Out of the 75 passengers, 47 survived the grim journey. The Somali Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on the social media platform X that it chartered a plane for the survivors, including Luul and Anas, and brought them back to Mogadishu on Saturday.

This story originated in VOA’s Horn of Africa Service.
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In December, many Africans return to their ancestral homes to reconnect with their families and traditions. In South Africa, that includes traditional healers. As Zaheer Cassim reports from Johannesburg, many are finding that a new app is helping to bring this age-old practice into the digital age.
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The Seychelles, a small island nation off the east coast of Africa, is among the countries participating in a climate change hearing taking place through December 13 at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands. Kate Bartlett visited the main island, Mahé, to see how residents are coping with rising sea levels and a warming ocean. (Videographer: Herbert Labrosse; Contributor: Rassin Vannier)
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DAKAR, SENEGAL — For the artistic and cultural elites of Senegal, the monthlong Dakar Biennale of Contemporary African Arts is a celebratory moment.

Every two years, hundreds of artists, curators and art lovers from across the world descend on the West African capital to attend the event, which was founded in 1989 by the Senegalese government and has over the decades become one of the most important showcases on the continent.

Pop-up exhibitions are held in hundreds of venues, from stylish five-star hotels to local art galleries. Roads are even more crowded than usual, with traffic jams stretching out for miles along the Corniche, the city’s picturesque seaside boulevard. Every night, there are music concerts, fashion shows, talks with artists and movie screenings held against the backdrop of palm trees and to the soundtrack of popping champagne bottles.

But it wasn’t until this year that the local artisans in the Soumbedioune crafts market, just off the Corniche and at the doorstep on the Medina working-class neighborhood, realized what the Biennale was.

For years, “we saw the OFF signs, but we didn’t know what was going on,” said Ndiouga Dia, a 48-year-old leatherworker from Soumbedioune, referring to a series of events organized in parallel to the official government program, scattered all over the city. “Only the artists knew among themselves what was going on.”

Craftsmanship is deeply rooted in the country’s culture. Senegal, like most African nations, has little capacity for industrial production, and traditionally much of its economy has relied on locally produced goods. For centuries, craftsmen played a central role in Senegalese social life, sculpting religious statues and ceremonial masks, sewing boubous (traditional colorful wide-sleeved robes), molding pottery and weaving baskets.

But these days, their role is in decline. As living costs rise, many Senegalese opt for cheaper, often Chinese products. And those that can afford it buy Western clothes and furniture to mark their social status.

So when two designers approached Dia, who is also the community leader of the Soumbedioune artisans, with a proposal for a joint exhibition, he didn’t hesitate for a second.

It felt good to be noticed and included, Dia said.

Designers Kemi Bassène and Khadim Ndiaye asked five artisans — a sculptor, a painter, a jeweler, a leatherworker and a upholsterer — to interpret the theme of “hippo.”

They chose the theme because it was easily recognizable across Africa, they said, bringing together people from different nations who live next to the water.

The exhibition, held in the central square of Soumbedioune, surrounded by artisanal boutiques and restaurants selling thieboudienne, the most famous Senegalese dish, has been a hit among locals. There are hippo earrings and a hippo necklace; a giant wooden sculpture of a sleeping hippo; and a hippo-shaped bag.

Papise Kanté, a 45-year-old sculptor who created two wooden hippo statues for the exhibition, said it allowed him to tap into a more creative part of his work, instead of just producing objects that he intended to sell.

“I have been sculpting since I was a young child,” said Kanté, who comes from a long line of sculptors. “Every artist wants to get better.”

But it also gave his work recognition.

“It’s because of the Biennale that people know my work,” he said. If you participate in the Biennale, he added, “you are proud.”

Bassène, the curator, grew up in Medina, next to Soumbedioune, but is now based in Paris. He said he wanted to bridge the divide between arts and crafts.

“This is the first time in the history that artisans, especially those who are custodians of traditional craftsmanship, are invited to the Biennale,” Bassène said. “For craftsmen in Africa, there is a natural progression towards the world of modern design.”

It was “normal,” he said, to include artisans in the Biennale “if we wanted to try to decolonize a little.”

This year’s Biennale is being held as Senegal is undergoing profound political change, with the newly elected authorities charting a more self-reliant and pan-African course.

Last month, the governing party, PASTEF, secured a resounding victory in legislative elections. Its win granted President Bassirou Diomaye Faye a clear mandate to carry out ambitious reforms promised during the campaign to improve living conditions for ordinary Senegalese — including greater economic self-reliance, revamping the fishing industry, and making maximum use of natural resources.

The theme of this year’s Biennale has been “The Wake,” alluding to the emancipation of the African continent from its remaining dependence on former colonial powers.

The new government of Senegal has “a transformational agenda,” said Bassène. “I think that what we have experienced politically will impact all the social sciences and all art.”

In the meantime, the Soumbedioune artisans have big plans. Dia, the community leader, said that they are planning a collaboration with a local school to manufacture backpacks for students.

His dream, he said, was to expand the production across the whole country so the Senegalese parents “do not have to buy Chinese products.”

“We have all the know-how,” he said. “We can produce more.”
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