What is what the African Social Forum?
The first World Social Forum which took place in Porto Alegre (Brazil) from 25 to January 30, 2001 marked a turning point as well in the evolution of the relationship between controlling and controlled as in that of the North-South relationships.
The world civil society which appeared with force in Seattle and in all the international events which followed, showed, in the capital of Rio Grande Do Sul, that it constitutes a social and political major force, vigilant, able to be organized and speak with only one and same voice, in spite of its diversity.
“Another world is possible” said this voice which, real clamour, rose towards the sky. It was for the happiness of damned of the ground that we are, we African. Overexploited, on involved in debt and marginalized, our voices also are choked, our standardized pain, our blocked fights. But on the few fourteen thousand participants in the World Social Forum, Africa, although run up against full whip by the néo-liberal reforms, was represented only by one about fifty people.
The world social movement prints a new dynamics with the construction of the African civil society which, in its turn, enriches it and reinforces it with lived sound, its hopes and its vision. Under the word “Another Africa is Possible”, several editions of the African Social Forum took place in order to enrich and to reinforce the African social movement, to prepare the participation in the World Social Forum and thus to consolidate the world social movement. Several thousands of African organizations could take share with dynamics and that through more than one score of national Forums, under regional and sets of themes.
The specific objectives of the Forum were:
- To consolidate the capacities of analysis, proposal and mobilization of the organizations of the African social movement so that they can fully play their part in Africa and within the world social movement,
- To build an African space of concerted development of alternatives to néo-liberal globalization, starting from a diagnosis of its social, economic and political effects,
- To define strategies of social, economic and political rebuilding, including a redefinition of the role of the State, market and organizations citizens,
- To define the methods of control citizen so that political alternation supports the expression and the implementation of alternative answers, credible and viable. |
