Culture for Economic Emergence

By Christopher JATOR, Cameroon Tribune, 06-10-2014
Academics and professionals are setting together the perspectives of a judicious use of this commodity.

A four-day international colloquium based on the theme “African culture as factor of development: viable cultural industries for sustainable development” opened at the University of Douala campus on October 1.

Dubbed “Les Deuxièmes Journées des Sciences du Langage,”

the colloquium attended by 90 participants was a tribute to late Prof. Maurice Tadadjeu, described by the Dean of the Faculty of Letters and Social Sciences of the University of Douala, Prof. Samuel Efoua Mbozo’o, as a learned mind of African Culture and Civilisation. With the initiative of the scholarly association “Cercle des Chercheurs en Lettres et Sciences Sociales”, CEDIMA 5, and the Department of Linguistics and Negro-African Literature of the Faculty of Letters and Social Sciences, FLSS, of the University of Douala, in partnership with the Institute of Fine Arts, IBA, Nkongsamba, the colloquium focuses on the importance of including the culture industry for economic emergence of the continent. The Asian experience with China as spearhead, according to Prof. Jules Assoumou, President of CEDIMA 5, is a reminder that culture is not only an immeasurable wealth, but the basis of all genuine growth: well-operated, well processed and well sold, it feeds the tourism industry, the social economy, crafts…

In his welcome address, FLSS Dean Prof. Samuel Efoua Mbozo’o qualified culture as a vector of sustainable development, essential and timely in the country’s specific context where every citizen is called upon to contribute for an emergent Cameroon by 2035. To him, this year’s theme reminds of the role culture plays in the moral and psychological identification, cohesion, and upbringing of a people; for as the saying goes: a people without a culture is a people without roots and we add that, a people without roots is a people with neither a present nor future.