Ouagadougou: The Observatory for the Production and Analysis of Discourse (OPAD) launched its 2nd International Colloquium this Thursday, under the theme "Rethinking Discourse Analysis from African Theories and Epistemologies: Endogenous, Postcolonial, and Scientific Issues." The opening ceremony of this three-day event brought together public figures and several stakeholders from the research community.
According to Burkina Information Agency, The chairman of the seminar's scientific committee, Professor Sidiki Traor, set the stage with a statement that knowledge produced about the African continent has long been influenced by Western perspectives. "This results in a marginal, fragmented, even biased image of Africa, which still fosters all sorts of negative complexes among many of its people, facilitating their domination by other nations," he lamented.
Initiated by the Observatory for the Production and Analysis of Discourse (OPAD), this international congress aims to examine the problem of theories imported from elsewhere. "Our societies are ailing because we have discourses that are sometimes poorly formulated," explained the president of the organizing committee, Dr. Boukary Nbi.
The communications on September 24 and 25 will show that in Africa, there are researchers who have developed concepts appropriate to the corpora analyzed.
The inaugural conference was led by Professor Djdj Hilaire Bohui, a tenured professor at Flix Houphout-Boigny University. It focused on the theme "Towards an endogenous approach to discourse analysis in an African context: why and for what purpose?"
According to the expert, an approach developed elsewhere cannot have the same capacity for expression and performance in another context or when faced with a people who have their own cultural realities.
The representative of the Minister of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, Alain Oudraogo, welcomed the holding of the session. He made special mention of the participants, composed of researchers, teacher-researchers, doctoral students and students from Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Ivory Coast, Benin, Guinea-Conakry, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon and Cameroon.
"This is proof that our systems of representation, our languages and our traditions constitute valid sources of scientific knowledge to be studied and disseminated throughout the rest of the world," said the technical advisor, believing that this approach aligns with current concerns in the Sahel region, namely the promotion of endogenous knowledge and the strengthening of the continent's scientific legitimacy.
The seminar, organised with the collaboration of LAPIDA, LABOLAC and R2AD, plans, for its third and final day, a visit to the Thomas-Sankara Memorial and the National Museum of Burkina.