From July 3 to 5, 2026, Château-Gontier-sur-Mayenne will host the third edition of Carré d’Afrique, an international festival celebrating African cultures and entrepreneurship. Three days of connection, discovery, and fellowship, organized by the association Entr’Aide 53 and its president, Lucie Ngalle.
A festival that has found its place in Mayenne
In just two editions, Carré d’Afrique has become one of the most anticipated cultural events in southern Mayenne. The second edition, held in early July 2025 around African and Afro-descendant art and culture, already drew more than 1,500 visitors from across the region to explore crafts, film, music, technology, alternative medicine, cosmetics, fashion, and gastronomy. The Haut Anjou Hospital Center even ran a health-consultation and awareness stand, a sign of how deeply the festival has taken root locally. Those three days also put Château-Gontier in the national and international spotlight, with coverage from Ouest-France, Haut Anjou, and the Cameroonian broadcaster CRTV.
For this third edition, organizers say they want to go further by spotlighting “made in Africa” innovation: technology, crafts, textiles, jewelry, and cosmetics will be on display alongside workshops and demonstrations of traditional know-how. An entrepreneurship and investment strand rounds out the program, with talks designed as networking spaces between project founders and industry experts.
The three-day program includes talks, literary meetings, workshops, exhibitions, craft stalls, food tastings, concerts, performances, a football tournament, and a much-anticipated gala evening, whose proceeds will help support the economic empowerment of rural women in Africa.
Lucie Ngalle: a mediator’s path turned into a calling
Behind this venture is a woman: Lucie Ngalle, 47, president of the association Entr’Aide 53. Born in 1979 in Cameroon, one of six siblings, she grew up in a modest but ambitious family — a mother who worked as a trader, a father in the military, and frequent moves as the family followed his postings.
At 19, a scholarship took her to Italy, to the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, to study economics and international marketing. It was there, far from Cameroon, that she says she became aware of her race for the first time — an experience that exposed her to racism, but also became the starting point of a lifelong commitment to dialogue between cultures. Working to pay for her studies, she learned to adapt to a new environment and developed a sharp awareness of what it means to be seen as different before being seen as oneself.
That experience pushed her toward intercultural mediation. Selected among the top 100 cultural and linguistic mediators in a European program, she went on to train in Rome — a turning point she describes as a moment that forced her to reconsider her own migration story. In 2011, facing a choice between returning to Cameroon or settling elsewhere in Europe, contacts she already had in Mayenne drew her to the department, where she went on to work with various associations, community centers, cultural venues, and local authorities.
Today, as president of Entr’Aide 53 — the association she founded on February 20, 2017 in Laval, before relocating it to Château-Gontier-sur-Mayenne in 2023-2024 — Lucie Ngalle continues the mission that has driven her all along: introducing the cultures present in France and giving a voice to the people who carry them. That conviction is what gave rise to Carré d’Afrique, conceived as a space where entrepreneurs, artists, artisans, and the general public meet, regardless of background.
Her outlook comes down to one steady conviction: getting to know one another better reduces prejudice, and it is the meeting of peoples that should drive genuine coexistence. She is also critical of how public debate tends to frame migration — too often reduced to a tool of fear or rhetoric — when, in her view, it is above all a matter of human stories. Her hope for the future: to see more exchanges between residents, beyond where each of them comes from.
Three days to celebrate Africa’s diversity together
More than just a festive gathering, Carré d’Afrique aims to be a space for dialogue and discovery, open to everyone — the curious and the well-informed alike. The 2026 edition aims to build on that momentum, once again bringing together dozens of exhibitors and artists from across Africa, with a simple goal: to let visitors see, taste, and understand today’s Africa in all its creativity and diversity.
Save the date: July 3 to 5, 2026, in Château-Gontier-sur-Mayenne.