I recently asked here if a United States of Africa is possible and whilst I was contemplating that question as well as the responses received two things happened
- I received an email inviting me to appear as a speaker at African Union Diaspora workshop on 6 Nov 2010 ( Church House Conference Centre, Westminster, London,SW1P 3NZ. time: 1PM tp 18) The invitation included a 14 page report based on the outcome of the the previous workshop in June of this year. This is the opening paragraph of the Executive summary
There are about 2 million Africans in the UK and together with their counterparts in Europe, Africans in the Diaspora are a potential force for good. Strategically located in some of the most influential parts of the world in terms of national and international politics , the Africans in the diaspora the majority of whom are highly educated have the potential of becoming a powerful lobbying force on various issues affecting Africa. The collective force of Africans in Diaspora has the potential of raising consciousness both in Africa and Europe and stimulate debate about Africa and its future in a competitive world.
But what I especially found interesting and would like us to discuss here is possible are the questions raised by the audience during the June conference
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2. I received a Tweet from someone I don’t know and whose Twitter Handle is @BlueTurbanstone and this what it said
@Ethnicsupplies The Formation of a United States of Africa on July 4th 2012 – See UnitedStatesAfrica.com
Not sure why I received that tweet but I decided to follow the link and see what I could learn and there was the heading BONO WANTS A UNITED SATES OF AFRICA. It is an old headline and if you have seen this before I apologies but it is new to me.
The immediate questions that come to mind are
- Why?
- For whose benefit?
- would he be speaking for us?
.
There is a lot here folk but hopefully it will get us talking about this topic
Wow Ida! So many questions which I am sure I would have loved to witness but alas, believe it or not, I will be at an Engineering Without Borders UK placements officers training event in Manchester on saturday. Many things have happened in this girl’s life since we last met. Please come back and post on what transpired at the Diaspora workshop.
In the meantime, these questions are good questions and they spark some very good thought processes. I am not sure whether my comment touches on the USAf, but I was more interested in the Diaspora workshop Q & A’s. I cannot answer any particular one, but I believe a starting point is for us, Africans, to take responsibility and I believe the answer will be held in our own hands. If we make this minor change in our attitude, we might achieve a lot more than we have in the past 50 years. The change? Constantly looking to the west for help/advice/aid/intervention/lobbying must come to an end. African solutions to Africa’s problems. A theme which seems to have arisen is skills transfer. An example I have borrowed from disaster relief org, RedR illutrates,
“The importance of developing the skills of local aid [development] workers, RedR campaign report, April 2010
“When a disaster strikes, international relief [aid] agencies receive the bulk of the media attention and donor funding but experts say it is actually the people living in damaged [developing] areas who save the most lives and help survivors long after foreign aid workers leave.””
And further, more women like you, Ida, taking a stand. Women need to get more involved in solving the issues. I think women mean business. When a woman is given a limited resource, she stretches it to achieve as much as possible. When a man is given that same resource, more often than not, it benefits only 1 person’s ego. Okay, very extreme examples, and I am not trying to be sexist here, but am stating the facts. I am also not advocating for a society completely run by women but for balance (as the opposite exists, run mostly by men). The facts? The role women have played in disaster relief can only be an indication of the impact women can make to development. for more on this refer to
http://www.copperwiki.org/index.php?title=Natural_disaster#Response_of_Women and
http://www.gdnonline.org/resources/proceedings-latest.rtf
You are right a lot of this starts with us acknowledging that we are in this together and coming together to address issues that affect us. I believe that conversations like this will get us to that point.
I will mostly certainly be pushing for a role for women on this new platform. Good luck on Saturday and keep us posted
UK cannot unite……but we Africans might? I suppose the thinking is we are not as evolved to contemplate that we in different counties have different needs? Cannot think why else such a stupid suggestion would be made…..
Hi Sadia, I am not sure I understand you entirely, so please forgive me if my answer goes off topic.Basically the call is for a formation a diaspora version of the Africa Union to address issues that affect the Africans in Diaspora. A central question that is being asked is whether our lives in Europe are dignified and if not are better off returning home. In the mean time Bono has jumped on the band wagon calling for a United State of Africa
Hi Ida,
MY comment was entirely around Bono’s suggestion around a United States of Africa not the call for the Diaspora to unite.
Ah.. we need to take the micro phone away from Bono for sure and as @navraj said on Twitter “US of Africa: EU is barely holding up – Bono is an idiot. Super States are not desirable”
I don’t think the world needs yet another talking shop. If anything there are too many grandiose schemes around and too little focus on the nuts and bolts. At present, there is no ‘social contract’ between the individual and the nation state in Africa. If an individual falls on hard times or is sick and needs medicine where do they go? To their family, their extended family, their village and then usually their tribe for support. The last place they expect or receive support is from the state. It is not surprising then, that when they do well, their loyalties and support giving is delivered in this order too. The giving of aid and the activities of many NGO’s (excluding emergency aid and the few NGO’s who actually deliver bottom up empowerment) only exacerbates this situation by breaking the tax revenue relationship and accountability between government and people.
In my not so humble opinion, Africa needs to focus on making the economic unions work eg ECOWAS to facilitate intra-African trade. Build decent roads and work on non-corrupt and safe border crossings. These are not glamorous big ideas but they are the kinds of nuts and bolts upon which development is based but are very difficult to actually do. They are completely within the power of African states to deliver. Private enterprise will generate jobs and importantly tax revenues that can start to provide a real safety net and build that contract between society and the state.
I like your comment Miketrup, especially about “nuts and bolts”. I am a “nuts and bolts” person. Africa needs engineering to make it’s foundation strong. Roads, power, water are all large scale developmental needs required to carry economies forward, often taken for granted, but it is essential. Only MAJOR problem is that these are capital hungry. I think business needs to engage with engineering skills a lot more in order to creat PPP’s and leave governments up to their own devices. I know people have often criticised the 50/50 relationship Botswana has with Africa’s diamond billionaire family, Oppenheimer through Debeers, but can you imagine if Bots had full ownership of its diamond industry? I don’t think Botswana would have seen the phenominal development it has been through over the past 40 years without that 50/50, it hold them accountable, it makes a good environment for REAL BUSINESS!
Welcome to the discussion Mike. I hate talking as I am a doing person and to solve the issues of development we need more doing people. But dialogue amongst us as Africans is critical as some amongst us do not know that they have a role to play beyond remitting money to their immediate families. this creates a new dilemma, WHAT ABOUT THOSE FAMILIES THAT HAVE NO ONE IN THE DIASPORA
The African governments are increasingly reaching out to us in the diaspora to return home to share our skills to aid development. This in my mind depends on us leveraging not only our networks by having conversations amongst ourselves in the first instance but also taking those governments back home to task.
In some instance folk on the ground are powerless due to lack of education and knowledge of their right and this leaves them incapable of negotiating effective social contracts with the leaders. We in the diaspora do not lack those abilities and I think most leaders recognize that
Somalia is a pawn in someone else’s war — it’s position opposite the Arabian peninsular (and Yemen in particular) has everything to do with it.
Every day I read news from there it breaks my heart because it has nothing to do with the people who are suffering terribly through no fault of their own. I live in hope, because its all that’s left. Somaliland isn’t recognised because it would bring too much stability to the region.
However, it’s a good case in point and the question is very well aimed. If ever there was an issue around which African unity (meant loosely) should rally it is Somalia, which should be left alone and given back the right to self determination. I hope Africa will, one day, have the confidence to tell others to just butt out.
Yes the situation is Somalia is worrying and up until the bombings in Uganda most African countries had turned a blind eye http://ethnicsupplies.org/sustainable-developmnet/international-news/city-bombings-in-uganda-some-after-thoughts
We have discussed the issue of Somaliland here and some of us didn’t even know where it is located http://www.africaontheblog.com/why-unrecognised-somaliland-is-a-model-for-african-democracy/
I hope Africa will, one day, have the confidence to tell others to just butt out- I hope so too!