Over the past three years the exhibiting photographers have been involved in the Goethe-Institut project ‘Photographers' Portfolio Meeting'.
The project, initiated by the Goethe-Institut South Africa and Simon Njami, was held in Maputo 2008, Bamako 2009 and Addis Ababa 2010. The programme, which runs during Rencontres de Bamako, is made up of
portfolio readings, master classes and peer review sessions.
For the portfolio reviews photographers met on a one on one basis with curators such as Bisi Silva from CCA Lagos, Mark Sealy from Autograph,
Chris Dercon from Tate Modern, Felix Hoffmann from CO Berlin, Collette Olaf from Foam, Kwezi Gule then from Johannesburg Art Gallery, John Fleetwood from Market Photo Workshop and other independent curators such as Simon Njami and Akinbode Akinbiyi.
 
In November 2011, as a fringe exhibition at the Bamako Biennale, Monique Pelser and Sammy Baloji are co-curating a selection of the works made
over the past three years by themselves and other past participants such as Calvin Dondo (Zimbabwe), Sabelo Mlangeni (South Africa), Abraham Oghobase (Nigeria) and Michael Tsegaye (Ethiopia).
 
Témoin/Witness will be focusing on the African metropolis or ‘megacity'.
This show includes work that reflects on immediate circumstances of this group of emerging photographers. The images deal with a wide range of
important social issues that consider an inherited culture and history, as the photographers bear witness to the constant flux and changing cultures
that define the ‘megacity'.