Delegates from nine countries attended the 4th IFACCA African Chapter Meeting which was held in Johannesburg, South Africa, on 24 and 27 May 2015 . The meeting was held to coincide with the African Union’s 4th Pan African Cultural Congress.
The Chapter meeting, which was co-hosted by the National Arts Council of South Africa (NAC) and IFACCA, provided delegates and senior executives of the NAC with the opportunity to discuss a range of issues of interest to members as well as IFACCA’s new Strategic Plan 2015–2020. This included consideration of issues such as: networking within the African continent, the World Summit on Arts and Culture, advocacy on the sustainable development goals and on raising awareness of the value of the arts, arts and education, research projects (including statistics, indicators and a survey of national arts agencies), and current and potential capacity building initiatives. Delegates also presented information on the situation in each of their countries and identified issues of concern and programmes and policies undertaken to address them.
The participants came from Zimbabwe, Zambia, Namibia, Botswana, Swaziland, Nigeria, Uganda, Tanzania and South Africa. IFACCA has 18 national members in Africa and five affiliate members . A range of partners that could help mobilise the work of the African chapter were identified.
Sarah Gardner, IFACCA’s Executive Director, and Ayeta Wangusa, IFACCA’s new Regional Coordinator for Africa and Arterial Network Cultural Policy Task group member (based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania) both attended the meeting. Delegates had the opportunity to hear from Avril Joffe, about the UNESCO 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, and Ricardo Peach, Director Vrystaat Arts Festival. On the final day, the Secretary General of the Arterial Network, Peter Rorvik, and its Research manager, Nadia Nkwaya, briefed participants on Arterial’s work and exchanged experiences of arts issues and advocacy.
The IFACCA African Chapter will meet again during the 7th World Summit on Arts and Culture in October 2016. The African chapter page is at http://ifacca.org/membership/regional_chapters/.