Africa is a continent of 1.5 billion people.
But if we look at it not as a geographical, political and demographic entity, but as a great soul, an energy unleashed by a common moving and feeling...lo and behold, then that Africa will be more lonely from today.
And we are lonelier and more discouraged all of us who have to deal with this great energy, because we will no longer have those who told us the stories of the African continent with the rare gift of passion combined with critical spirit, of the most lucid analysis immersed in the most authentic emotion. Of the thought that was never ashamed to be in love and cynical, present and dreamer, cruel and glorious.
Just like the great mother.
Africa will feel lonelier because it has lost the one who, before telling the story, listened to it and knew how to look at it.
Because it has lost journalist, reporter and writer Angelo Ferrari.
Angelo's battle against the worst evil was known to those who knew him and had become known to his readers a few months ago, after the publication of his autobiographical book "I Don't Know How It Will End," which now more than ever is important to read.
It ended as it probably should have ended, but damn soon.
And compared to the things Angelo had to say and do, the ideas and plans for new travel and publishing in the pipeline, even more bastardly soon.
I wrote it at the time and I repeat it, partly because I learned it from people like him: Africa is full of vicissitudes, facets, paradoxes and dramas, surprises, tears and smiles. It is a deception into which you must fall in order to rise again, a necessary stumble, a wonderful misunderstanding that will make you understand everything better.
Just like the life of those who know how to win and lose it "on the field," playing it without hiding and without either taking things for granted or relying on clichés and prejudices.
Angelo's latest written testimony is a summation of how we can love Africa with transport and rationality and how we can fight for the same reason to live as long as we are allowed to breathe.
Angelo Ferrari not only teaches us so many things about the universe in which we gravitate, he will always teach us how to endure as well, because in turn all the invisible, the unknown, the short and constrained lives have taught him.
Those of the "righteous," as he called them, quoting Borges.
"Those who, without knowing it, will change the world."
The language of the righteous is not spoken, it is listened to and observed. Until one becomes, in turn and without one's knowledge, righteous.
Africa has lost one of its tallest, most sensitive, most intelligent righteous men, and I don't think it will forget.
Indeed, the fact that there was an Angelo Ferrari, will fuel the hope of seeing other listeners, other observers and eventually other storytellers like him.
I have lost a great friend and teacher, for me it will be a little harder.
A big, big hug to Gabriela.

Angelo Ferrari, from Milan, was 63 years old and for at least 30 years he traveled the length and breadth of Africa as a correspondent and correspondent for AGI Agency and then continued to follow it from the Italian editorial office.
He wrote a host of very interesting articles and several books, among which, apart from the latest "I don't know how it will end" (OgZero) it is worth mentioning "The Mists of Congo" (2011), as well as collaborations with another great Africanist who died prematurely, Raffaele Masto ("Mal d'Africa" and "Africa Bazaar").
With yours truly, he authored "The Pandemic in Africa" (Rosenberg&Sellier, 2021).
Here we repost his last African interview.