CHAPTER TWO: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND AND CURRENT CHALLENGES _____________________________________________________________________ Box no. 2.1: Burkina Faso, the cultural centre of Africa Burkina Faso is a cultural heart of Africa and hosts major Pan-African events, including FESPACO, the SIAO and the National Cultural Week. FESPACO is the Pan-African festival of cinema and television of Ouagadougou. Created in 1969, it has become one of the greatest cultural events of the continent. The objective of FESPACO is to contribute to the promotion and development of African cinema as a means of expression, culture and awareness. FESPACO is held every two years in Ouagadougou for a period of one week, during which new films from the whole of Africa are projected for the purpose of winning prizes. Since its inception, prizes for best films have been awarded to many producers, notably from Niger, Côte d’Ivoire, Algeria, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Ghana, the DRC, South Africa and Nigeria. Actors of the film industry on the African continent use this event to exchange ideas and establish new contacts, thus contributing to making FESPACO an excellent means of promoting Pan-Africanism. The SIAO is one of the main fairs for the promotion of the African craft industry. Created in 1989, SIAO is held every two years, for one year, during the year in which FESPACO is not organised. SIAO brings together the general public, as well as traditional and professional artisans. In 2006, the theme of SIAO, ‘African craft industry and equitable trade’, attracted participants from 29 countries and included 225 professionals, 582 journalists and 2,080 artisans. The National Cultural Week is organised every two years by the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Tourism. It is held at the same time as SIAO and the venue is Bobo-Dioulasso, the second major town of Burkina Faso. This festival celebrates all the arts and promotes debates, symposia, projection of films and exhibitions. Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk; http://www.culture.gov.bf; http://en.wikipedia.org/. 115. In this context, it is useful to mention one of the eminent intellectual products of Burkina, notably in the area of universal and African history, namely Professor Joseph Ki-Zerbo. Box no. 2.2: Joseph Ki-Zerbo: an emblematic figure in the struggle for independence, dignity and development in Africa Joseph Ki-Zerbo was a Burkinabe historian and politician who was born on 21 June 1922 in Toma, Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), and who died on 4 December 2006 in Ouagadougou. After obtaining his bachelor’s degree in Bamako, he studied history in Paris. He defended his doctoral thesis at the University of Paris’s Institut d'Etudes Politiques and thereafter became Professor of Universities. He was one of the greatest thinkers of contemporary Africa. He taught in Orléans and Paris and, in 1957, in Dakar. Together with the Senegalese Cheikh Anta Diop, Joseph Ki-Zerbo renewed the studies on the history of Africa, thereby aiming at giving Africans some control over the definition of their past. From 1975 to 1995, Joseph Ki-Zerbo chaired the Association of African Historians. In 1957, during his settlement in Dakar, he started his political activities by forming the MLN. Sentenced by a revolutionary people’s court, he was forced into exile. He returned to Burkina Faso in 1992. Joseph Ki-Zerbo founded, in 1993, the Party for Democracy and Progress (PDP) – which is a member of Internationale Socialiste. The PDP was an opposition party to 61