Throughout the world, some peoples have managed to preserve, alongside the universally recognized system, their own time measurement systems as a mark of their own identity. This system of governance of space and life sets the dates for celebrating important events and calibrates the functioning of the world according to a cosmogony.
🌍 AFRICA, CRADLE OF HUMANITY
Africa, cradle of humanity and civilization, possessed, in its diversities and complexity, an endogenous calendar cycle and a symbolism of the most important social events. This cycle forged African cosmogony for centuries and regulated the rhythm of the internal organization of African societies.
For example, there would be a historical link between the official solar calendar of ancient Egypt, established more than five thousand years ago, and some traditional festivals celebrated in Africa.
🎊 TRADITIONAL AFRICAN FESTIVALS
Among these traditional festivals:
🔹 The “taking of the sacred stone“, which marks the beginning of a new year among the Guin people in Togo
🔹 “Umlanga“, the reed dance, celebrated periodically in some southern African countries
🔹 “Umuganuro“, which celebrates the solstice in Burundi
🔹 “Yennayer“, the Berber New Year celebrated in North Africa
But the course of history and the upward trajectory of Africa’s progress were brutally and lastingly interrupted by the deportations that dispersed Africa’s vital forces beyond the seas and by the colonial irruption into the endogenous systems of social, economic and political governance of African peoples.
Through their cultural alienation and brutality, these intrusions changed the cycle of social events and caused Africa to lose its points of reference and its very identity.
📅 THE GREGORIAN CALENDAR
This is the case with the Gregorian calendar imposed on African nations during colonization. Just like the linear borders that divided the continent and in which many peoples and languages continue to bear the scars, this new calendar ignores the endogenous rhythms and the consecrated natural or cultural cycles that intrinsically define African identity.
This calendar change, seemingly innocuous, has profoundly altered the division of time and the organization of major events, themselves calibrated on mastered cycles specific to the African space. This has resulted in acculturation and a loss of identity for Africans who, immersed in a system designed for the Western space, struggle to adapt or assert themselves.
🌐 A NEW MULTIPOLAR ORDER
In a contemporary context marked by the shift in the world order and by the progressive emergence of a multipolar order that establishes, among other things, respect for diversity as the foundation for world balance and the engine of shared prosperity, and where Africa seeks to assert itself as an autonomous power, it becomes imperative for Africa to rehabilitate its historical system of time division and the setting of traditional festivals and key dates.
🎊 ELEVATING THE AFRICAN NEW YEAR TO UNIVERSAL HERITAGE
The goal is to elevate the AFRICAN NEW YEAR to the rank of common universal heritage, like other peoples of the world such as those of China, Israel and India who celebrate respectively “Chūnjié” or Lunar New Year, Rosh Hashanah and Diwali in northern India, and those of Ethiopia who stand as an exception in Africa with their New Year called “Enkutatash“.
🇹🇬 TOGO’S INITIATIVE
In this regard, Togo, which chairs the High Committee on the Decade of African Roots and the African Diaspora, proposes to initiate, in collaboration with the African Union, discussions with African specialists and the diaspora to propose celebration dates for African festivals, particularly the date of the AFRICAN NEW YEAR, based on African historical, cultural and religious landmarks.
To this end, Togo plans to organize an international symposium on this theme in Lomé, at a date to be announced very soon. The conclusions and recommendations of this symposium will be transmitted to the African Union Commission for decision and subsequent implementation.
📜 9TH PAN-AFRICAN CONGRESS IN LOMÉ
It should also be noted that the launch of this initiative today is part of the implementation of one of the flagship recommendations of the 9th Pan-African Congress held in Lomé from December 8 to 12, 2025, namely the decolonization of minds and self-reinvention.
This initiative responds to the deep expectations of African Peoples to see their continent assert itself as an autonomous power that self-references and defines its own path of development.
Done in Lomé, February 24, 2026