Last Sunday, November 7th, Radio France Culture’s « Tout un monde » magazine on culture and identities in motion was devoted to Tuaregs. The program was titled « Tuareg, a fading culture », and guests were photographer and historian Jean-Marc Durou, who’s been taking pictures of these nomadic people for the last 40 years, and anthropologist Nadia Balalimat.

Discussions centered on culture, economy, politics and also languages. The Tamasheq language spoken by Tuaregs is indeed one of the Berber languages of North Africa, and is used in the Sahel region (Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso) but also in Algeria and Libya. We count approximately 5 million speakers of its different variants.

Linguistic issues were mostly raised by audio reports on teaching of Tamasheq, language evolution, Berber identities, importance of music and poetry etc., all of which were produced in Tamanrasset by Arnaud Contreras who should soon post on our www.sorosoro.org website his video reports on Tamasheq language and culture.

Listen to the program (available on podcast for 15 days following original broadcast)

Not to forget the second part of the program, to be broadcast this coming Sunday, November 14th, 3pm, on France Culture.