A centre dedicated to contemporary African culture is set to open its doors in Paris in September. The Maison des Mondes Africains – or MansA – was announced by President Emmanuel Macron in 2021, but its launch stalled due to disputes over location and budget.
“It’s finally taking root in reality, after a lot of theories, a lot of things written on paper, back and forth, but nothing concrete,” the centre’s director Liz Gomis told French news agency AFP earlier this week.
MansA’s new home, at least for the first two years, will be in a former fashion workshop in the 10th arrondissement of Paris, with the exact address yet to be revealed.
Its first guests are due to visit in June, with the official opening set for September.
Gomis is convinced that MansA “will change things” by giving more visibility to African creativity.
“It is essential to have a place in Paris to talk about African worlds in the broad sense, particularly via the diasporas, and to counter the blind spot that currently exists in France on contemporary African [creativity], which abounds everywhere else in the world,” she said.
Giving France ‘another chance’
President Macron announced the centre’s creation in October 2021, during the France-Africa summit held in Montpellier.
This “House of African Worlds” was one of 13 recommendations made by Cameroonian academic Achille Mbembe, in a report commissioned by Macron entitled “New relations between Africa and France: Meeting tomorrow’s challenges together”.
He told AFP that the idea behind MansA was to give France “another chance, at a time when it is being tossed around in Africa and paying for the mistakes of successive governments”.
In 2022, Macron set up an online public consultation to explore what the public wanted from MansA.
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But the project stalled due to battles over its budget, which was ultimately revised downwards, and its location.
The Ministry of Culture, which is overseeing the project with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, originally advocated for MansA to be hosted at the Paris Mint (Monnaie de Paris), an institution created in the 9th century which now includes a museum and exhibition halls.
However, this proposal sparked a storm of protest from the employees of the Mint, who were concerned about the future of their museum – which had reopened in 2017 after €80 million of self-financed restoration work.
Staff said that the venue could be deprived of the use of rooms that it rents out, the income from which allows it to operate without state aid.
Rodolphe Krempp, a union representative at the Mint, told AFP: “There is no synergy between the two institutions”. He said that the proposal was launched without consultation, adding: “We wonder who had this idea and why.”
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Political debate
The proposal to use the Mint also made waves in political circles. Communist MPs said such a fusion of projects would “profoundly call into question the coherence of the cultural, industrial and commercial activities” of the historic site.
Meanwhile far-right National Rally MPs accused the government of giving in to “the sirens of repentance” with regard to the legacy of France’s colonial past on the African continent.
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The Ministry of Culture had planned to allocate €2.1 million to MansA in 2025, according to the draft finance law, with €5 million to come from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
However, this has been thrown into doubt with the adoption of a disputed budget in February which saw the French government impose €32 billion of savings across different sectors.
In the face of uncertainty, Gomis remains cautiously optimistic. While the current 800m² space is a temporary installation, she says it is a “first step to begin rolling out our programming” and “a milestone while we wait for a definitive location”.
“I have to continue my little battle. Because deep down, it’s still a battle,” she said. “It’s great to be able to anchor ourselves in reality and start to come together, but there are now a lot of things to come into play.”
