Dominique Barjot, Everlasting Secretary of the Académie des Sciences de l’Outre-Mer, deciphers his establishment for us and shares his ideas on North-South relations.
Is it a problem so that you can take cost of the Académie des Sciences de l’Outre-Mer, based in 1922, an establishment that embodies the ‘temple’ of data (Africa, Latin America, Asia, Oceania)?
Sure! This Academy was born simply after the First World Struggle with the intention of taking an curiosity in the complete French colonial empire. On the time, the thought was that France, exhausted by the battle, wanted to regenerate itself by way of the contribution of Africa and, extra usually, its colonial empire. Sadly, the occasions and the hopes positioned within the empire had been disappointing. This was skilled by our Academy, which has at all times defended the concept that this colonial house was an asset for the French nation. It was additionally within the atmosphere of our Academy that the thought was born that it was mandatory to assist previously colonised nations to develop into impartial, to take cost of themselves as a way to develop into highly effective and affluent states. It was the hope of cooperation.
What’s your position as Everlasting Secretary of the Academy?
The Academy is a gathering of students who, being impartial, take into consideration the world, attempt to mirror on what we are able to construct for the long run, for the nice of humanity. We’re one academy amongst many in France. There are us and the 5 so-called Academies of the Institute (the Academy of Ethical and Political Sciences, the Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Nice Arts, the French Academy and the Academy of Inscriptions and Literature). They had been based by Richelieu with royal approval. Then, with Napoleon, the institution of the parliamentary regime and the Republic, the thought arose that this mannequin of Academy must be democratised.
What are your ambitions in your ten-year time period of workplace?
It’s an actual problem! The Everlasting Secretary is a sort of operational managing director of an establishment underneath public regulation. It’s made up of 275 academicians, 200 of whom are a part of the disciplinary sections. Inside these sections, there are 20 academicians and 20 correspondents, who’re current everywhere in the world and relay the Academy’s actions. The remaining 75 individuals, together with 50 associates, who are sometimes prestigious personalities, specifically heads of state and authorities of nations of the South, reminiscent of Léopold Sédar Senghor and Abdou Diouf (Senegal), President Cardoso (Brazil).
We’ve got a ultimate class, the free members. A gaggle of people that welcome new disciplines that our construction has not managed to combine. We’re an interdisciplinary establishment. It brings collectively lecturers, researchers, scientists and other people of motion. It’s a mixed drive.
For the previous three years, now we have chosen to have a theme of the yr. In 2022, it was Migration; in 2023, Globalisation and its limits; this yr, 2025, the reconfiguration of the worldwide order. As you may see, we began with the difficulty of Migration and ended up with the hope of rebuilding a world order that promotes peace, justice and worldwide safety.
How does the general public profit from this data?
We’re very open-minded. The standard actions of the Academies include often organising periods on a significant theme of the modern world, calling on members of the Academy and exterior personalities.
So as to win over a extra consultant loyal viewers, now we have created a Society of Buddies of our establishment, made up of people that wouldn’t naturally be recruited as academicians, however who’ve a want to be taught and share information with the skin world.
We even have actions that open us as much as the skin world, with the organisation of exhibitions, guide shows and debates. Alternatively, we even have particular actions aimed toward younger individuals. We assist French and international college organisations to organise conferences on our premises. Our intention is to be open.
Do you utilize new applied sciences to speak and broaden your networks?
All our periods are actually broadcast by videoconference. This permits us to double our viewers at every of our periods and to create participation with people who find themselves distant, in fact, however who can ask questions and contribute to our discussions. It’s an exquisite enrichment!
What’s the place of Africa in your establishment?
It may be defined by historic causes. We had been born out of the realisation that France might be reborn due to the forces of its colonial empire after the First World Struggle. Nevertheless, its empire was primarily African. In our library, 40% of the entire quantity consists of works that deal solely with Africa. In consequence, we’re a centre of experience on the African continent that’s unrivalled in France. We dwell in a worldwide, altering world. To take an curiosity in Africa immediately and share helpful experiences with Africans, you need to take an curiosity in the entire world.
You may have taken an curiosity in points reminiscent of financial historical past from the nineteenth to the twenty first century, enterprise historical past, management, together with just lately the Nigerian businessman Aliko Dangote. Why this alternative?
By specializing in Asia and the Far East, I found that the important thing to their improvement lay within the creation of conglomerates with distinctive entrepreneurs who had constructed teams able to lasting a really very long time on the worldwide stage. Take, for instance, Toyota in Japan and Samsung in South Korea. China has adopted this path; it’s the Asian mannequin. This has allowed me to carry out an necessary notion, the structure, in all rising nations, of multinationals which compensate, by way of their dimension, for the structural lag on developed nations.
Is there an recognized course of that may be adopted?
These giant rising multinationals have emerged within the Far East and are growing in India, in northern Europe and in Asia, significantly in Russia. If Russia had not been concerned in a battle with Ukraine, it will have adopted a reasonably comparable improvement curve to that seen in different rising nations reminiscent of these in Latin America, significantly Mexico and Brazil.
These are powers whose worldwide competitiveness is predicated on giant teams based by enterprising entrepreneurs.
In Africa, Aliko Dangote is following this path. That is what I noticed in Nigeria with its immense wealth, its potential, its contradictions with a dreadful and irrational political system. Regardless of this, the nation has managed to generate highly effective financial forces. Which means that it’s at all times doable that, in a rustic dealing with many obstacles, the entrepreneurial spirit can overcome the difficulties.
Within the case of Aliko Dangote, you need to have a look at the massive improvement of urbanisation within the nation, with gigantic cities underneath development. For that you simply want cement and housing. He additionally understood that as a way to develop, you may’t simply concentrate on the nation as a enterprise, you need to have a global technique. That’s what Aliko Dangote has succeeded in doing. By means of his cement mission, he has develop into a frontrunner in the complete African continent, to such an extent that he’s even aggressive in nations on the excessive ends of Africa, reminiscent of North Africa and South Africa.
Relations between France and Africa are very shut. Right now they’ve been broken by varied failures. How can these relationships be redefined regardless of the perpetual crises?
It’s true. We face a formidable problem. We’ve got skilled a interval of cooperation by which African heads of state and French leaders labored carefully collectively. This was at a time when France was wealthy and affluent and had a aggressive benefit on the earth. That is now not the case immediately. France should assessment its place. It should take account of the opinion of its companions, the nice nations of the world and of Europe. It should assessment its place at a time when African nations are dealing with monumental challenges reminiscent of demographics, well being and entry to information and training for all.
We perceive Africa’s disappointment with France. The answer actually lies in dialogue. Africa wants concrete options. However the necessary factor is the best way to go about it. We’re now not within the perspective of ‘ready-made initiatives’ supplied by the nations of the North. Right now, we’d like to have the ability to co-manage, co-construct and co-design the initiatives of the long run to fulfill the challenges dealing with Africa.
This implies serving to these nations to accumulate abilities in scientific disciplines that can allow them to have interaction in dialogue as equals with Western nations, after which to share information, strategies, applied sciences and know-how. As a Western nation, we should settle for that African nations can search partnerships outdoors Europe to accumulate the expertise and information they want. Sadly, we are able to now not be a single level of contact!
We’re in a significant geopolitical upheaval, particularly with Donald Trump’s return to enterprise. Is that this much-discussed ‘world South’ a matter of reflection for you?
It’s elementary. It is likely one of the key problems with our Academy. One of many elementary causes for its existence. The worldwide South is usually a qualifier used to say that we now not perceive how issues work within the nations of the South. It’s true that some wonderful issues are taking place in some nations, adjustments, mutations, transformations that should be taken into consideration.
From this viewpoint, all nations have the proper to improvement, prosperity and social and financial progress. We can’t decree this for them. We are actually in a scenario the place we have to develop joint initiatives, with equal elements for nations which have entered the event path and people which might be within the strategy of doing so.
This raises the entire concern of whether or not or not there must be free commerce. Is the answer for everybody to close themselves away behind their borders? I say no. It’s not a case of the strongest crushing the weakest. We due to this fact must discover a means ahead that has a global dimension. A means ahead primarily based on cooperation and collaboration, on bilateral and multilateral agreements.
In conclusion, no matter anybody says, Africa is the continent of the long run par excellence. We should consider in its future.
Transcription by Mamadou Bah.
