Celebrating Crossed Cultures
The Hague African Festival

The Hague African Festival is a new addition to the broad assortment of events within The Hague Festivals and is yet another vibrant festival to put The Hague on the cultural world map, combining a brood of different cultures as it celebrates the coming together of the African and the Dutch people. The event will be held this year on Saturday 18 July, at Roggeveld in the Zuiderpark, a promising location that lends itself to future expansion.

A colourful and fascinating view of the Africa of today, The Hague African Festival ‘aims to focus on the richness of the African cultural heritage and contemporary developments within African cultures.’ The festival boasts an outstanding musical component with an impressive program of traditional and contemporary African musicians, who have an eye for tradition and innovation. A complete list of artists can be found on the website for the event. The Festival will also include a lively Africa Market. The theme for the market is ‘Fair Trade’, its cultural aspect being the importance of respectable working conditions and sustainable and ecologically responsible production.

The event is being run by the African migrant organization ‘Sankofa Foundation’, an initiative of the Ghanaian community in the Netherlands. Sankofa is derived from the working group ‘Akwaaba Den Haag’. The group was created subsequent to an idea to provide information and awareness about the Ghanaian culture in The Hague and more support to grow in the Netherlands for the purpose of poverty reduction in Ghana. Sankofa is well embedded in the community of African migrants and has strong working relationships with established organizations such as Oxfam, contributing to a great extent to the quality of Sankofa's interventions. Sankofa aims to help the self development of disadvantaged communities in Africa through the implementation of sustainable integrated farming and education projects which are initiated and supported by the community itself.

The word ‘Sankofa’ originally refers to the phrase “to understand the present, you need to know the past.”

According to Chairman George Duncan, The Hague has been chosen as the festival location ‘due to its international appeal as the city of justice and peace, and the demonstrated involvement of the municipality.’

The Hague African Festival is a welcoming meeting place for all inhabitants of The Hague, claiming to be an international event for an international city. Sponsors include the likes of internationally recognized companies such as Oxfam, Amnesty International, Brand Bier and The Hague Municipality (Citizenship Department), and the event will be put together by the organizers of The Hague Jazz Festival. In designing the festival, the organisers have chosen to immerse the visitor in ‘the African way of life’.

There is plenty of fun to be had by children too with the festival including a host of interactive workshops, making The Hague African Festival an enjoyable event for the whole family.

Where: Grote Markt, The Hague
When: 18 July 2009 10.00-23.00

For more information visit: www.thehagueafricanfestival.nl

Written by Holly Marder