Art Moves Africa – Retracing Roots and Tracing New Routes: Mobility and Touring in North Africa

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Summary of Outcomes
As such, connections between Alger / Tunis / Tripoli,
and destinations in West, Central, East and Southern
Africa generally go via Casablanca. EgyptAir has
connections with several East African countries,
as well as South Africa, Zimbabwe and Zambia in
Southern Africa and Nigeria, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire
in West Africa. Other destinations may be reached
via Addis Ababa.
Despite these developments, cost remains a major
impediment to air travel. Travel to Europe remains
less expensive than travel within the continent, even
on lines such as Tunis – Alger.
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QUOTE:
3.2.
Impediments to
mobility
Impediments to mobility
are listed below, grouped
into 11 main categories.
However, it should be noted that many of these
impediments are related and often difficult to
dissociate. For example, the lack of interest in
travelling to other African regions is critically
related to the lack of information-sharing and
networking. The difficulty of obtaining visas
is often compounded by high travel costs,
with one or the other discouraging artists or
cultural professionals from even seeking out
mobility opportunities. Visa issues are cited
most frequently in part because artists associate
travel with Europe and do not consider
travel opportunities in other countries where
they may have visa-free access.
« We need to talk about
non-mobility. We need to talk
about artists’ stagnation. And
we need to fight against that
stagnation. »
Mehdi Djelil
Visual artist, Algiers*
—
Moreover, most of these obstacles can be
linked to the after-effects of colonialism, nationalisms
and wars, and the persistence of
neo-colonialism in the form of development
agendas, regionalization, conflict, etc. This reality
underscores the importance of mobility as a
means of strengthening South-South solidarity,
understanding, co-imagining, vision-sharing,
knowledge-sharing and project-building.