Why
Sponsoring the Festival in the Desert is not just associating the image of his own company to that of a cultural festival, unique in its kind and well reknown in the international media.
It's much more!
The Festival in the Desert brings closer the populations of South Mali to the touareg population, while a certain suspicion / rivalry has always been present. The Festival in the Desert, therefore, is instrumental for peace in Mali and one of the most beatiful and successful example of dialogue between cultures and civilizations.
The Festival in the Desert creates many economic opportunities for people in the Timbuktu region (they do not have much!) and all regions of Mali, which are crossed by hundreds of tourists. It is therefore instrumental for local development.
The Festival in the Desert opens to the world the doors of an ancient and unknown heritage: the Saharan culture and civilization. By using music as a pretext and a tool, the Festival in the Desert contributes to the perpetuation of Saharan culture.
And in recent years, the Festival in the Desert has become a key element of the Malian government strategy against banditry in the northern regions. While some Western governments, driven by various geopolitical interests, push to abandon the North of Mali to the bandits (that is obviously the result that will be obtained by continuing to formally ban tourists to visit the North ... ), the Festival in the Desert, thanks to the economic and professional opportunities it generates, actively contributes to fill the void that international policies are creating in the northern regions, and prevent young people to be attracted by easy money.
The Festival in the Desert must be sustained!
But the Festival in the Desert mobilizes a huge logistics and it needs a large budget. It is unable to fund itself with tickets and merchandise sales.
Thus, sponsoring the Festival in the Desert is crucial for its sustainability and it associates sponsor image with local development, peace promotion, people reconciliation, Sahara culture perpetuation!
This extremely positive image of the company-sponsor will be visible in Mali and in the world. Each year the festival is covered by 80-100 journalists coming from all around the world. During the 2011, two teams of filmmakers (a German team and an American) came to produce two documentary film on the festival. Films have been produced and broadcast by many international channels such as Arte and the BBC, TV Link (USA), Al Jazeera Music ...
Articles were published in several newspapers in many countries. (See Media section)