At the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, a three-day long Third Biennial African Philosophy World Conference was held. Its theme was: “Building Africa’s Future on African Philosophy”. The honour guest was Professor Wole Soyinka, the only – so far – African Nobel laureate in literature. He was born in Nigeria to the Yoruba culture in 1934, but was to some extent educated in UK.

In his lecture, he warned against the abuse of the term “African unity” when it comes to cooperation among African countries. He also contrasted the concept of “power” with the word “authority”, assigning the former to such dictators as Mobutu Sese Seko, Idi Amin or Jean-Bédel Bokassa, and the latter to statesmen such as Julius Nyerere and Nelson Mandela. After the lecture, many participants (mainly students) had the opportunity to ask him questions. Among others, they asked about the future of African literature, the treatment of some African by others, the relations between the Black Diaspora and Africans on the continent, the conflict in Biafra.

The lecture was attended by Dr Konrad Czernichowski from the Faculty of Economics of UMCS, who is currently on a research and teaching internship as a Visiting Professor at JordanUniversityCollege in Morogoro.