May 15, 2013
I'll have a project
How international grants and cultural cooperation have shaped contemporary African art into a project made of objectives, activities and expected results
Written by Iolanda Pensa
Why promote contemporary African art as "contemporary African art"? Doing so means to have a project. In other words, such discourse – with its inherent aims, objectives, activities, calendar, budget and target – is developed within a project template, and the constant elements which characterize contemporary African art deeply relate to the essence of projects. The expression "contemporary African art" addresses an international network, and the reference to Africa responds to the eligibility of the continent in the strategies of development and of intercultural and multicultural dialogue. The focus on promoting contemporary African art, rather than producing it, negotiates more easily with international partners.
The Dakar Biennale is a relevant case study. Since 1996 the Dakar Biennale has been a unique biennial specifically focussed on contemporary African art, termed La Biennale de l'art africain contemporain de Dakar[1]; it is a recurrent exhibition with a limited budget supported by national and international grant-markers and sponsors. This article argues that the Dakar Biennale is the result of the project drafted in 1993 which explicitly states the aims, objectives, activities, calendar, budget and expected results of the event[2]. The project is the tool used to structure the biennale with its focus on contemporary African art, and it is the tool which will influence also in the future all the discourse around the biennale.
My point is not that contemporary African art is constructed to respond to grant-makers, but that the discourse around contemporary African art – and of many productions of contemporary art outside of the so-called centres of the art system – is strongly informed by the project.
Project
Project is a very common word (Gratton 2005, Kunst 2013). This article focuses specifically on the project as a tool through which people and institutions interact with potential grant-makers and partners. I believe this specific meaning of project is at the core of its extensive use and directly or indirectly it implies a specific way of organising a discourse also around contemporary art. "Send me your project!" – says the officer, but this simple invitation means something more than sending a written text in which you explain what you want to do. If we observe the kind of projects requested by grant-makers – independently from the fact that those projects can have an open or closed structure – the expectations related to how the project has to be structured are very precise, and the project will be evaluated through criteria which define the coherence between the aims of the proposal and the aims of the grant-makers.
From the perspective of a grant-maker, a project is a text structured into aims, objectives, methodology, activities, calendar, budget, results and target, what the project management would define a project plan (PMBOK® Guide).
The main feature of a project is to have an end. A project is not something which will continue forever (and which the grant-maker will have to fund forever), but it is something which is established to produce a certain number of measurable results in a timeframe. A presentation of the applicant always go with the project.
The history of projects is also marked by some key moments. The first well-known example of a project is The Manhattan Project, the efficiently managed programme which produced the atomic bomb. It is not the beginning of the project management, but it is surely one of the most well-known projects which have marked our history (Norris 2008). It is also a useful reminder that the most efficient project is not necessarily the best choice. The first well-known example of an institution requiring projects is the World Bank, a bank that needed to make sure that its loans would be repaid. The World Bank was established to support reconstruction and development after Second World War; the bank rapidly moved to support development and poverty alleviation in the so-called developing countries (Kapur et al. 1997). The documentation required by the bank was conceived to collect information about the investment and to make the project cycle transparent. This working model of applications and evaluation spread among grant-makers in the US (starting from the Rockefeller Foundation and Ford Foundation) and in the European Union, which disseminated this practice also among its member states. This transformation is today indubitable: even major cultural institutions, which used to receive annual or long-term support from public grants, now apply for grant with projects. The number of non-profit organisations – the main project applicants – increased exponentially after World War Two.
While the actors of the art system continue to exist and continue to be an object of observation (Thompson 2008, Thornton 2012), something new has already emerged. New non-profit organisations produce culture; museums and academic institutions have started a process of transformation: they produce projects. They structure in a new way their activities, they reinforce their educational outreach, they establish partnerships with other institutions and communities, they create networks, and they produce online initiatives, public art, and relational art. In other words the art system shows the effect of the projects, which are both a limit and an opportunity.
Cultural institutions can apply for grants which are not necessarily devoted to culture. Public art can be produced with grants supporting infrastructures and urban transformations; relational art can be commissioned by public funds with social and intercultural aims; biennials can be supported by national and local government as a tool to develop urban branding and tourism.
In Africa grants are provided by national and international grant-makers. National grants – when they do exist – work in the same way as in any other country; the lack of national engagement in culture can actually provide freedom of expression. International grants in Africa are dominated by the aim of supporting development.
Exhibitions and publications on contemporary African art are produced in Africa, but especially outside Africa. Following the project template allows to deconstruct the discourse around contemporary African art and to observe it from a different perspective.
Aims
Aims are non measurable objectives. They define the frame of a project and they provide the information necessary to grant-makers to verify if a project can be supported. A project will be supported only if it shares the same aims of the grant-maker. Programmes are the way grant-makers compress their mission into aims (Federici 2009, Pensa 2007).
Grants devoted to international cultural projects by public or semi-public grant-makers tend to support national cultures abroad (Hassan 2003). This means that funds are devoted to people and institutions with the nationality of the nation supporting them. Dutch artists and institutions can be supported abroad by Mondriaan Foundation; Swiss artists and institutions by Pro Helvetia; artists and institutions from the Canary Islands can be supported by the Canary Islands’ government, and so on. Through time public or semi-public grant-makers have introduced specific terms for people living in a country without the nationality of that country. Public or semi-public grant-makers can also support local projects, if within those project artists and institutions from their country are involved. France – besides its support to French artists and institutions – has introduced in Africa specific programs to support African local artists and institutions (Konaté 2002). Depending on the program concerned, also the European Union can provide support to African partners within international projects involving also European ones. For artists and institutions establishing partnerships and projects in Africa – beyond the philanthropic motivation, there is the desire of looking for a space of freedom, imaginary and adventure (Amselle 2005).
There are grants specifically devoted to support culture in Africa; i.e. Prince Claus Fund, Doen Foundation with the programmes ArtsCollaboratory and Africalia, and the European Union EU-ACP support programme to ACP Cultural Industries. Other grant-makers have programs in which culture can be supported; i.e. Ford Foundation and Open Societies Foundations. The majority of grant-makers in Africa support development, they are focussed on infrastructures and education.
Explicitly or implicitly culture in Africa is supported as a tool for development (Diouf 1990, Fall 2010) and social change (Harris 2007). The European Union explicitly refers to cultural industries which imply economic development; Prince Claus Fund is centred around culture and development and it claims that “culture is a basic need”; Ford Foundation and Open Societies Foundations include culture among strategies towards freedom of expression and civil society. Culture is introduced within grant-makers’ programmes because it appears potentially relevant for the development of Africa (Ward 1975).
In the so-called West, grants towards cultural projects related to Africa are supported by the same institutions, or they are framed within the need of strengthening intercultural and multicultural dialogue (Zolghadr 2007). Those strategies have been accused of creating a new apartheid made of specific opportunities within the category "ethnic minority arts" (Araeen 1994) and for having a hidden agenda intended to facilitate repatriation of migrants (Manga 2007).
Eligibility
Eligibility is based on two main criteria: the typology of the applicant, and its nationality and geography.
Grants mainly address non-profit institutions. Grant-makers define a list of countries or regions they want to focus on; priority can be also given to countries according to their GDP Gross domestic product.
Individual grants focus on nationalities. In some cases a photo is requested, in others applicants are explicitly asked to specify their race (for South Africa, ref. Wicomb 2005). None of the grants I analysed require information about individual income; only institutions have to provide information on their budget, mainly to show they are active and capable of anticipating costs.
Even if it contradicts the opinion of witnesses (Sagna 2006, Konaté 2009), it is obvious that a grant-maker devoted to support cooperation and development in Africa is more interested in supporting African artists rather than artists from other continents, and it is realistic to assume that the European Union had a specific interest that the Dakar Biennale become a contemporary African art biennale.
What is very interesting about eligibility criteria is that they can be fooled. An example of a conscious sabotage of the eligibility criteria is the support of Ford Foundation to the Townhouse Gallery in Cairo through grants to a partner non-profit organisation based in Sweden. Examples of unconscious sabotages are the growing number of cultural institutions established also by artists. What is particularly relevant of institutions established by artists is that they can become artworks (Maharaj 2002). This has been acknowledged by many exhibitions and curators (Enwezor 2002, Hanoussek 2007, Silent Zones 2001). Institutions such as Luanda Triennale by Fernando Alvim, ArtBakery by Goddy Leye, “Third Text” by Rasheed Araeen have developed very peculiar strategies and they can be acknowledged as artworks in the same way as other initiatives have been acknowledged, such as Laboratoire Agit Art (Deliss 1995) and Huit Facettes Interactions (Enwezor 2002).
Also the definition of nationalities is extremely ambitious, which is something healthy. People can have more than one nationality, they can fit more than one definition, and often nationality is only a fluid gatekeeper which allows several entrance points. Even the Dakar Biennale with its focus on African artists is not so bureaucratic in defining who is African and who is not.
Strict eligibility criteria – since they have formal requirements – leave more space to manipulation than flexible criteria. Paradoxically, an illuminated institution such as Prince Claus Fund (Mbembe and Paulissen 2009) has applications which are much more difficult to manipulate than others; and this is a disadvantage because manipulation is one of the few space of creativity projects leave.
Context analysis
Projects justify their relevance and necessity according to the context analysis. The most common way to analyze e a context is to observe its needs and problems. Basically a situation is deconstructed on the basis of cause-effects. Through this procedure the project highlights what doesn't work and what is needed. Within this process there is an emphasis on community participation and in the involvement of people who know the context best. The project objectives are therefore identified following to the context analysis. A different technique is to focus on aspirations and opportunities, this approach though is uncommon.
The complexity and the interconnections between micro and macro causes is so determinant that context analysis not necessarily is a fruitful starting point. An interesting example is the artwork by James Becket produced in the neighborhood of Bessengue in Douala Cameroon, an "informal settlement" – as South Africans would call it. The work was a short range radio station authorised by the government simply because it was an artwork, produced in 2003 within the project Bessengue City promoted by the artist Goddy Leye and ArtBakery. As one of the neighborhood community chiefs said "We would have never thought that what we needed was a radio station". The context analysis would have never produced an artwork or a radio station.
Considering artworks as something which responds to problems distorts them. The legitimacy of art production is thus argued within a discourse that is external to art. This discourse focuses on economic development, community building, civil society, conflict resolution, and fostering professionalisation and employment.
Linking art and creativity to freedom of expression, however, offers a better leeway, but often leads to a selection of artists that is based on their context’s need for self-representation, their ability to represent “local communities’ identity” and engage with social, political and identity issues. It is significant that the film programme of the Townhouse Gallery in Cairo for years was centred around Iranian films that were intellectually engaged yet also did not cause any problem with the Egyptian censorship. In addition, the emphasis on freedom of expression also directs selections toward specific mediums such as photography, internet projects, video, documentary films, public art... which are considered more appropriate as communication tools and to reach a large audience.
In promoting contemporary African art, the context analysis is centred around Africa and its diaspora. The problems identified are linked to the image of the continent trapped into the representation of poverty, backwardness and conflicts; to prejudices and the difficult coexistence in the so-called West of people and communities of different origins; to the lacking of African perspectives; to the absence of those key actors which would enhance the art system in Africa to be linked to the so-called centres; and to the poor presence of African artists within the so-called centres. The needs identified are therefore to change the image of Africa, to produce knowledge and information, to promote the African cultural richness, to provide a space for cultural production of Africa within the international scene, by enlarging and modifying the perspectives.
Another need which regularly emerges in the discourse around contemporary African art is the need of disseminating art among the population, and in particular among the African population. This is a relevant argument because it is extremely frequent but it is not argued. Bringing art to people seems to be considered a self-evident necessity, something which does not need to be motivated and which is the objective of the specific project session "target".
Objectives
The objectives respond to the question "why?". The legitimacy of the objectives is argued in the context analysis. In order to receive a support, the objectives of a project need to be specifically linked the grant-makers aims.
Why produce contemporary African art? Explaining why it useful to promote contemporary African art is easier than explaining why produce it. Furthermore – and even more important – it is easier to provide measurable results when you promote it rather than when you produce it. The correlation between the project objectives and the grant-makers strategies and programs is made evident by the use of the same key words (Wrange 2007).
The key words used to define the objectives of the Dakar Biennale and the necessity of producing an exhibition about contemporary African art are grounded on the need of changing the image of Africa, of producing knowledge and information, of highlighting the cultural richness of the African continent, and of creating a space for the cultural production of Africa within the international scene (Hassan 2003) by providing new perspectives. Those key words are used also by other contemporary African art projects and they match with the key works used by grant-makers (independently of whether they support the biennale or not): Africa, civil society, development, dialogue, economical development, education, enlargement, Europe, exchange, global, human rights, innovation, intercultural, intercultural learning, interdisciplinary, network, multicultural, partnerships, scalability, North-South relationships, sustainability, technology.
Activities
The activities are all the actions needed to reach the objectives. A project is always a series of more than one activity, structured in a calendar and represented economically in a budget. According to the grant-maker not all activities are eligible.
Artworks are from this perspective particularly interesting, because you don't have to say that you are actually producing an artwork. If a grant-maker provides funds for infrastructures – many grant-makers love to provide fundings for wells even in the rainiest countries of the world – you can make the infrastructure without telling that it was actually designed by an artist or designer. Also workshops, conferences, the establishment of artists residencies, archives, documentation centres and digital platforms are more easily supported than artworks. If we observe the activities supported by grant-makers, it is not surprising that "in recent decades, it has become increasingly evident that the art world has shifted its interest away from the artwork and towards art documentation" (Groys 2002: 108). By not being limited by commercial purposes, biennials also allow to present "practices of non-objectual nature as well as works of an interdisciplinary nature and even practices pertaining to other fields of cultural production" (Basualdo 2006: 58).
In any case the project boundaries have an impact on cultural productions. Artists can sell their work directly or through galleries and art fairs, they can create an institution or they can produce works within eligible activities (many artworks, in particular videos, presented at the Dakar Biennale were created during workshops and artists residencies). This produces an inconsistency within the artists’ production. The portfolios become incoherent; artists have many different types of work, and they write, curate, teach and manage institutions. This is not an asset for artists who want to be at play in the so-called centres of the art system, where everyone has its specific role and the work of artists is requested to be recognisable and consistent.
The objective of promoting contemporary African art tend to structure activities in a way which gives visibility to the widest number of artists; the selection often prioritises young artists and aims at representing a little bit of all African territories. This is another relevant structural limit. Exhibitions and publications on contemporary African art, which present a large variety of artists, are not consistent in promoting the same protagonists. By confronting the artists participating in the Dakar Biennale with other 70 exhibitions which have been determinant in the history of contemporary African art between 1966 and 2004, what appears is that only less than 20 of over 2'000 artists attended more than 10% of those exhibitions. Basically to assure that contemporary African art is promoted, many artists get a little bit of visibility but not enough to allowsthem to emerge within the dynamics of the so-called centres of the art system.
Calendar
The project plan has a duration, a starting date and an ending date. The ending date presumably marks the moment in which the project will continue without the support of the grant-maker.
Biennials and triennials projects – and biennales and triennials are, precisely, projects – have the advantage of being already conceived as a series of activities implemented within a timeframe. At the same time the recurrence that characterises those events poses a specific problem: they need a support – also a partial one – which guarantees their continuity. The reality is that only a government can provide such a support. If we look at the longevity of recurrent exhibitions, it does not surprise that the ones that survive the most are the ones desired and supported by a public authority (Pensa 2006).
Budget
Who finances projects does not want to be lonely. Co-financing is encouraged or explicitly requested. It is justified by different aims of the grant-makers: supporting the independence of institutions, affirming the principle of reciprocity in which who receives also gives, and making sure that in the future the grant-makers can stop financing the project (since there are others who will do it). Some grant-makers consider in-kind contributions as co-financing. This system is not accepted by any grant-maker. The European Commission never considered the office of the general secretary of the Dakar Biennale as part of the project budget; this made the contribution by the Senegalese government to the project appearing less than it is (Fall 2006). Social reports have introduced the practice of acknowledging also volunteers work, but even if grant-makers allow to include it somehow in the budget, it is normally not consider a co-funding.
It is important also to mention cash flow. Normally grants can be partially anticipated, but in the majority of cases a percentage of the grant will be provided after the report. Also delays are common in particular for public grants.
Contemporary African art receives very limited supports and it is financed by few grant-makers. If confronted with the cost of the exhibition Documenta in Kassel which in 2012 cost around 20 million euro (Bonami 2012) and to the average budget of the Dakar Biennale which is around 900'000 euro, grants provided by the Prince Claus Fund are around 10'000-25'000 euro; ArtsCollaboratory has a programme to support institutions which reaches 125'000 euro. Ford Foundation provides direct contributions between 10'000 euro and 500'000 euro but it also creates funds managed by other institutions which can reach around 500'000 euro. Many projects are actually accomplished without money and with the involvement of many volunteers.
The cost of applying for a grant is substantial. It doesn't make much difference if you apply for 1'000 euro or 450'000 euro; the cost of preparing the project is not covered by the grant even if the project is successful. The relationships with the grant-makers (follow ups, intermediate reports, assessments, final reports) is an additional cost to the cost of the activities. For this reason a growing number of people and institutions are considering alternative options (Sow Huchard 2002, Seck 2010). The project cycle has also a high price for grant-makers, and many are looking at simplifying procedures, by reducing the initial documents requested and by providing assistance during the process.
Expected results, metrics and evaluation
Activities produce results which proove that the objectives have been reached. Those results are evaluated through quantitative and qualitative indicators and metrics. Basically if the objective is to promote contemporary African art the expected results can be that a certain number of people at the end of the project will know contemporary African art. To accomplish this result you can produce exhibition, publication or you can contribute to Wikipedia (activities). To evaluate the results with quantitative indicators you can count visitors, the number of books published, distributed and sold, or the number of people who read and contributed to contemporary African art articles on Wikipedia. To evaluate the results with qualitative indicators you can collect reviews, test the knowledge level in your target group through questionnaires and interviews, or you can ask external experts to judge the work produced. But if you promote contemporary African art, probably the most relevant result are the new projects you triggered by facilitating networking among artists, collectors, curators and scholars. Evaluating the impact of this kind of processes is complex, and it is not possible objectively to determine which was the point of origin of a new project and its links with other projects. How can we know that a collector became a collector when he saw the exhibition Magiciens de la Terre or another one? If Jean Pigozzi says so, you can acknowledge it, but can those results be visible in the short-term?
Another specific problem is related to artworks. Assuming that the production of artworks can be included among the activities of a project, how to evaluate its quality, impact and capacity of "contributing to"? The way results are evaluated puts quality in the background. Producing something “not very bad” or extraordinary, from the point of view of objectives and expected results, can be same.
Results are evaluated according to the project plan. In other words, the assessment focuses on the project itself and too easily becomes self-referential. It is obvious that this is not the way other people are interested in evaluating initiatives and projects. Expectations can differ widely in the evaluation of biennials (Basualdo 2006:52) and the Dakar Biennale reviews perfectly reflect this dissonance.
It is important to mention the work implemented by Doen Foundation and Getrude Flenge, who has started a series of measurements on the impact of cultural projects based on observing transformations. The evaluation involves different people and it is based on the question "what has changed?". The dynamic is interesting because it is not self-referent; it is not centred around the project and its internal coherence, but on the idea that a series of actions contribute on the short, medium and long term to transformations. Talking about transformations allows the detection of both positive and negative effects, it facilitates critical analysis because it creates a distance from a single project and it inscribes projects within a lager frame which is not the direct responsibility of the project coordinators.
Target
The target is made of all the people which directly or indirectly are involved in the project. Specific target groups can be identified (young people, women, local public, artists…), also according to the grant-makers programs and guidelines. The evaluation of the project impact on the target groups is analysed through quantitative and qualitative indicators. What is paradoxical though in projects is that ultimately the real target of a project is its potential supporter. The entire structure of the proposal and its evaluation is directly orientated towards the grant-maker, which is indeed the client and principal recipient of the project.
The necessity of involving local public and communities emerges particularly in the evaluation of events organized in Africa (Murray 1997, Hanussek 2008). Reviewers stress the importance of taking art to people, of producing public art and of making sure art is not for an elite. This same emphasis appears in projects focussed on intercultural and multicultural dialog, where the "community" is expected to be protagonist and it is conceived as "a real place, or a shared sense of belonging and meaning" (Harris 2007). Reaching a wide public is a central issue in political strategies and for sponsorships. Philanthropic institutions want to help as many people as possible; governments want that electors to see what the government is doing for them; sponsors want to show their brand extensively and to the right people. What is surprising is that reaching a wide public becomes automatically a good thing. It is like in the reading campaigns: reading is good, no matter what you read; in the same way increasing the art public is good independently from the artworks. Historically art was used to send a message, to inform and shape the population. Art has always had productions meant for an elite. Only with the establishment of museums, art becomes something like the salad "eat it, because it is good for you". The fact that contemporary art needs to reach a wide public responds to governments, grant-makers and sponsors, and it increases the legitimacy of cultural institutions which produce it. But putting the public at the centre tend to produce consequences in the selection of artworks and locations.
Conclusions
The project influences the discourse around contemporary art, and its template allows to highlight some specific dynamics. Contemporary African art addresses an international network and, to do it, it justifies its need with arguments which go beyond contemporary art. Those arguments are informed by the project.
Looking at the way projects have shaped contemporary art, and more specifically contemporary African art, is an attempt to detect in a different way the art system. This attempt is meant to contribute to concepts and approaches in the study of global art.
Global art focuses on two main directions: observing local phenomena and observing phenomena which are considered more specifically international, such as biennials. In the last decades a growing interest in global contemporary art has also forced scholars to reconsider concepts and approaches and to make room for territories and protagonists which have not, or only marginally been documented within a common history. However, centre and periphery are still key concepts, which directly and indirectly guide the understanding of the art system, of global art and also of the cultural production of Africa (Ströter-Bender 1995, Bydler 2004, Buckholz 2006).
The centres are those places where the value of an artwork is determined by a process which involves different people and institutions, each of them with a specific role in the production, distribution and definition of value. Everything else which does not work in this way is considered periphery.
When the system involves artists, dealers, collectors, museums, exhibitions, journals, art critics and auctions – each of them with a specific role – it does not need a project. The project is a tool and a rhetorical strategy when the system works in a different way. And the art system works almost always differently. Focusing on what works differently and on the so-called periphery allows to centre the attention on the world.
To understand the capillarity of the international art system, a next step is to focus on the artists. Contemporary African art is still an excellent example to that end (i.e. Oguibe 1997 about Uzo Egonu; Ogbechie 2008 about Ben Enwonwu; Picton 1998, Binder 2010 and Vogel 2012 about El Anatsui; Hassan 2012 about Ibrahim El-Salahi; Vincent 2011 about Frédéric Bruly Bouabré). The Dakar Biennale with its 24 years of history, 12 editions, 500 artists selected and its focus on contemporary African art is a relevant starting point to observe – through the biographies of its artists and network – how the art system is structured and how it has changed over time. Artists – more than institutions – can provide a relevant portrait of the capillarity of the system, they can consolidate the idea that there is no dichotomy between local and international, nor between centre and periphery, and they can contribute to formulate new categories capable of modifying the current taxonomic system which defines the inclusion and exclusion of an disproportionate number of territories and protagonists.
Iolanda Pensa is a researcher at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland
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[1] The first edition of the Dakar Biennale was in 1990 and it was focussed on literature; in 1992 the Dakar Biennale has its first edition focussed on contemporary art. Only in 1996 the Dakar Biennale become a biennale focussed on contemporary African art.
[2] Current analyses highlight the biennale’s links with the Senegalese cultural policies and other biennials, and its capacity of being a platform for African self-representation (Mauchan 2009). In general the Dakar Biennale is considered an important event and at the same time, for many who see it as malfunctioning, a missed opportunity. The fracture which characterises the Dakar Biennale between its establishment and 1996 is not a secondary element. The establishment of the biennale can be grounded on other biennales and on the Senegalese cultural policy, but its reorganisation in 1996 introduces new elements which can not be attributed to the same motivations which have determined its establishment. The difference between the two moments (establishment and reorganisation) is that the bienniale' network has changed. In 1989 – when the event was created – the promoters were the Senegalese artists and government; in 1993 – when the process of transformation is initiated – the discussion involves a different and international network made of experts who live in other African countries and outside Africa. The participants recognise the value of the event, they criticise its organisational limits and, to respond to the biennale logistic and budgetary restraints, they propose that the Dakar Biennale limits its field of inquiry, by becoming specialised – not on contemporary art – but on something more specific: contemporary African art. Hence, the event was not reorganised to meet the specific requests of the Senegalese artists and government, and the artists therefore continued to express their dissatisfaction with the biennale (Fillitz 2011); the event was rather reorganised to meet the specific demands concerning events participating in an international network. It is not possible to objectively evaluate the weight of each participant in the process of transformation, but it seems reasonable to consider that people representing grant-makers could have played a significant role (Lamine Sall 2010), even if some witnesses affirm the contrary (Sagna 2006, Konaté 2009). What is beyond doubt, however, is that the 1993 discussion introduces something new: a project.
