Verso una civiltà universale. Il viaggio di Senghor in Italia nel 1962

Léopold Sedar Senghor’s journey to Italy in 1962 should be seen in the context of a phase in which part of the Italian political world revealed “third world sympathies”. These sympathies arose on the one hand from the need for Western countries to abandon defensive attitudes, increasing their efforts to provide technical and financial assistance to the Third World and on the other hand from the desire to gain international capability. In this context, the signing of the bilateral cooperation agreement with Senegal, signed on October 2, 1962, proved to be, for Italy, functional to a policy of regaining the international role in East-West relations, as well as North-South. For Senegal, Italy represented an important subject with which to enter into agreements that could provide concrete help in the process of building its country and Senghor, convinced of the need to build a political, economic and especially cultural dialogue with the West, became from that moment an important interlocutor both for the Italian government and for men of high political stature as the Mayor of Florence, Giorgio La Pira who sensed the value and geopolitical role of the Mediterranean area and the newly independent countries as a focal point of world peace. In this context, Italy had well understood that the agreement with the African country could contribute to lead it on an equal footing with other European powers.