From 17 to 20 October 2022, the Week of the Italian Language in the World was also held in Tanzania. This year’s theme, “Italian and young people” was very interesting for the Country, with an average age of about 18 years and which is experiencing a 3% population growth rate per year. For the occasion, the Italian Embassy in Dar es Salaam favoured the presentation of Italy, its culture and its language at universities and schools. In particular, the books by Geronimo Stilton “A Thousand Wonders. A Journey to Discover Italy” and the Divine Comedy translated into Kiswahili were donated to the International School of Tanganyika, whose school library is the most important in Tanzania.
The Dante Alighieri Society Tanzania was then launched at the Residence of Ambassador Marco Lombardi. The Country is in fact still recording a growing interest in Italian, both on the part of its fellow citizens living in Tanzania, who are requesting language courses for their children, and on the part of Tanzanians, who are looking at Italian as an opportunity thanks to the restart of important tourist flows from our Country.
Professors Federico Santi and Francesca Chinappi of the Sapienza University of Rome, in close contact with the Dante Alighieri Rome, were commissioned by the first Dante Alighieri Tanzania Assembly to collect an adequate number of participants to make it operational and then to move forward with appropriate registration with the competent local bodies. Neema Nyerere, granddaughter of the founder of Tanzania and a great friend of Italy, accepted the honorary Presidency of the newly established Dante Alighieri Tanzania. Ambassador Marco Lombardi, applauding the initiative, reiterated the full support of the Italian System to the Dante Alighieri Tanzania, recalling that, without a real cultural exchange, there can be no lasting economic cooperation.
