Bamako Biennial of Photography 2009 (Bamako, November 2009)
Founded in 1994 by French photographers Françoise Huguier and Bernard Descamps, this event began with the mission “to underline the richness of a poorly known sector of African creation.” In the years since, many international reputations have been made at the event, including those of photographer Samuel Fosso and Simon Njami, former Revue Noire editor and co-curator of the controversial 2007 African Pavilion in Venice (it showcased work from the collection of Congolese businessman Sindika Dokolo, whose wealth is alleged to have derived from his father’s ties to Mobutu Sese Seko, former dictator of Zaire). The eighth edition of the photography festival will be the first since Njami stepped down as artistic director. To date, a replacement artistic director has not been announced by the event’s driving force, CulturesFrance, an international agency for the French ministries of Foreign Affairs and Culture and Communications.

FESMAN 2009 (Dakar, December 1–21, 2009)
In 1966, Senegalese poet and president Léopold Senghor piloted the launch of the Festival Mondial des Arts Nègres (World Festival of Black Arts), a pan-African multidisciplinary arts festival held in the Senegalese capital of Dakar. A second version was organized more than a decade later in the Nigerian capital of Lagos, in 1977. Now, more than three decades after that, the event returns to its spiritual ground zero, Dakar, encompassing a variety of emblematic sites, including Gorée Island, a former slave trading post; though it also involves venues in the capitals of Guinea-Conakry, Guinea-Bissau, Gambia, Mauritania, and Mali. The multidisciplinary festival covers the visual and performing arts, as well as furniture and textile design and architecture.