BGU lands reggae star for Africa Center opening

One of the world's best-known reggae performers, Alpha Blondy, will arrive in Israel next week, to help inaugurate the university's Africa Center. Among other hits, the performance at Ben Gurion University by the Cote D'Ivoire-born singer next Wednesday is expected to include a song he wrote in Yitzhak Rabin's memory, which bears the slain Israeli prime minister's name as its title.

"More than just a singer, Alpha Blondy is known in Africa as a hero, a real activist and fighter against inequality since he began singing against apartheid," said Tamar Golan, a former journalist, retired Israeli ambassador and one of Israel's leading authorities on Africa, who invited Alpha Blondy here.

The singer, whom Golan describes as "a true friend and lover of Israel," will perform at the opening of a new African studies and culture center at Ben Gurion University which she will head, in an inauguration ceremony co-organized with the university's student association.

The two-day inauguration of the university's Africa Center - which will be attended by diplomats from all African embassies in Israel, African soccer players from Israeli teams and community leaders of migrant workers from African countries - is the end result of a move which surprised people in the field when Golan first started it.

"What's amazing about this center is that it is opening up just as African studies have all but disappeared from Israel's universities," said Dan Shaham of the Africa department of the Foreign Ministry, which helped put together the launching events next Wednesday and Thursday.

Over the past few years, both the Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University have considerably downsized their once-famous African studies departments.

Relying on her knowledge and personal acquaintance with many of the continent's rulers and ex-rulers, Golan currently teaches more than 200 students in two classes.

"For me, it can't be all about academia," she says in her characteristically informal manner. "People need to feel a bit of the essence that is Africa, the culture, the fun. Otherwise it's not worth much."