Sowing Somankidi Coura. A Generative Archive is a long-term research endeavor by Raphaël Grisey in collaboration with Bouba Touré around the permacultures and archives of Somankidi Coura, a self-organized cooperative along the Senegal river founded by a group of former African migrant workers and activists in France in 1977 after the Sahel drought of 1973. The book assembles texts, voices, images, takes, retakes and research around the Pan-African history of the cooperative of Somankidi Coura, the liberation struggles of migrant workers and farmers in France and West Africa. It enables thinking a politics of decolonisation for agriculture, migration, care, soil and the archive. Sowing Somankidi Coura. 

A Generative Archive offers new perspectives on the analyses and modes of action of ACTAF (Cultural Association of African Workers in France), and the permacultures of the Cooperative of Somankidi Coura, for speculative permacultures to germinate. Sowing Somankidi Coura presents a series of interviews with Bakhoré Bathily, Goundo Kamissokho Niakhaté, Mady Koïta Niakhaté, Ladji Niangané, Ousmane Sinaré, Siré Soumaré and Bouba Touré, the cooperative’s founders, a large selection of Bouba Touré’s photo archive, and various contributions from Raphaël Grisey, Tobias Hering, Olivier Marboeuf, Aïssatou Mbodj-Pouye et Jean-Philippe Dedieu, Karinne Parrot, Romain Tiquet, Kaddù Yaraax and Sidney Sokhona.

Edited by Raphaël Grisey
with Bouba Touré

Contributions by founders of the
cooperative Bakhoré Bathily, Goundo
Kamissokho Niakhaté, Mady Koïta
Niakhaté, Ladji Niangané, Ousmane
Sinaré, Siré Soumaré and Bouba Touré,
and by Raphaël Grisey, Tobias Hering,
Olivier Marboeuf, Aïssatou Mbodj-Pouye
et Jean-Philippe Dedieu, Karinne Parrot,
Romain Tiquet, Kaddù Yaraax and
Sidney Sokhona

Designed by Anne Retsch and
Archive Appendix

Softcover, English, 320 pages
ISBN 978-3-943620-67-2