Ben Okri states that we need a new language for speaking about one another

"First of all, we need a new language for speaking about one another. We need to get rid of many words, and redefine and reinvent others, as a myth or reality. Africa´s future will not be a dialogue between tradition and modernism: it will be a dialogue with completely new terms."  This was one of the reflections of Ben Okri, a Nigerian poet and author, at the conference that concluded the Sueños Traicionados (Betrayed Dreams) cycle, organised by the Barcelona Contemporary Culture Centre (BCCC) and Casa África.

Okri concluded this experience, in which authors such as Donato Ndongo or intellectuals like Simon Njami have also participated, with a poetic and fictional reading of his texts and a dialogue with the audience. The 1960 independences were the excuse for a conversation that was broadcast live by BCCC and Casa África through their respective webpages and that Okri defined as "a dance through African history, from past to present."

Ben Okri defended that the best education is to travel, and in its place, then culture, and he invited the conference´s audience to visit the African countries and see what is written, sung and filmed in them. Okri appeared moderately optimistic about the continent´s future once it frees itself from a generation of politicians, among which he included Mugabe and a few others.
 
The Nigerian author, who has lived in London for a number of years, concluded the conference by stating that continents are metaphors, and we all have an Africa inside which we should rediscover and handle lovingly in order to make it stronger.