In the presence of the Minister of Education, Culture and Higher Education and other representatives of the Somali education system, a ceremony was held yesterday in Mogadishu, during which the Italian Ambassador handed over to the Intergovernmental Academy of the Somali Language a heritage of about 2,000 volumes and some hard-disks donated by the Roma Tre University.
This is a valuable collection of rare books, journals and scientific articles, dictionaries and grammar and linguistic texts, printed in Italian, Somali and several other languages, relating to the literary, linguistic, scientific and legal-administrative heritage of Somalia.
The digitised material - contained in the Somalia Archives - includes documents that are often unavailable in the Somali language, such as school textbooks, unpublished manuscripts (poems, collections of proverbs, etc.); recordings of debates conducted by the 'Elders' of the Academy of Arts and Sciences in the 1980s on traditional culture issues; collections of data on various topics, recordings of traditional music, videos, photographs, etc., all produced as part of the Cooperation project with the Somali National University in the 1980s.
This impressive paper and digital archive, unique in its kind, is the fruit of decades of effort by Prof. Annarita Puglielli, former Director of the Centre for Somali Studies at Roma Tre University, who worked in close collaboration with Prof. Cabdalla Cumar Mansuur of the Somali Language Academy in Mogadishu, the Somali National University and the Academy of Arts and Sciences in Mogadishu.
This donation, highly appreciated by Somali institutional and cultural authorities, represents a fundamental support that Italy can offer to the recovery of Somali historical memory, often irreparably damaged by the devastation of the civil war, and to the reconstruction of the educational system.
A subsequent ceremony will see the handing over to the Somali Minister of Justice of the digital archive, in Italian and Somali, of the laws and official bulletins published in Somalia between 1950 and 1989.
On the sidelines of the ceremony, the Minister of Education and the Italian Ambassador in Mogadishu visited an exhibition of paintings by young emerging Somali artists - organised by the School of Art of the Italian-Somali socio-cultural association ASSOIT - with the theme: historical memory meeting contemporary artistic expression.
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