How the Diaspora can help to create an AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT PLAN

By Cecile Johnson

Contact info Cecile Johnson Empowering YOU, Transforming Communities 1634 E 53rd Street. Ste 216. Chicago IL 60615 Cecilejohnson13@gmail.com 773-431-2788

Page 1 of 11 Cecile Johnson Essay How the Diaspora can help to create an ARICAN DEVELOPMENT PLAN

How the Diaspora can help to create an AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT PLAN

By Cecile Johnson

In 2001, Nelson Mandela asked, Will the legacy of our generation be more than a series of broken promises? It will be if we fail to plan and take action. If we fail to develop a fifty year African Development Plan that addresses the unique needs of our people worldwide. It is our choice. In 2008 I attended a World Poverty forum in Denver, Colorado and heard one of the speakers proclaim "that in the year 2050, the average income for the US would be $90,000 the average income for China and India would be $45,000 and the average income in Africa would be $1800. And that Africa had the richest resources in the world." How could that be, I asked, that forty two years from now the world expectation for Africa would be so low? That the richest continent would continue to lose its resources and have others utilize it rather the people who lived there. That Africa's children spread all over the Diaspora had no place to return to and call home. And there was born a desire to understand more, to understand why such a thing could be said in public and no one challenge it. I felt the spirits of my ancestors calling me to this challenge. Asking me if all they had done for me to create my current reality was not enough for me to now do something for them, for the future generations of Africans all over the world. Would I not waken the sleeping giant and help my people to regain their destiny. Would I not help them to see who we really are. That the cradle of civilization, the breadbasket of the Roman Empire, the labor that built the west and the resources - oil, gold, diamonds, precious metals that the world currently benefits from, should be benefiting us not just some leaders in Africa. And so began my closer look at Africa which started with the document the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) in Africa: promises and Progress (June 2002). The MDG consist of 8 goals: (1) End poverty and Hunger; (2) Universal Education; (3)Gender Equality; (4) Child Health; (5) Maternal Health; (6) Combat HIV/AIDS; (7) Environmental Sustainability; and (8) Global Partnerships. A review of the report showed that when you looked at the rate of progress needed to meet goal they had concluded, That if current trends continue, Africa will be the only region where the number of poor people in 2015 will be higher than that in 1990. It will then account for half of the worlds poor , up from less than one-fifth in 1990. Where under-five Infant mortality will not be reduced by two thirds till 2140. Where children still die because they have not been immunized from measles, despite the widespread availability of safe and effective vaccines. 1. Where 1 in 31 women face a chance of dying in childbirth compared to 1 in 4100 in the industrialized world.2 And so began a search for answers, that included researching documents, attending conferences, holding discussion with people, African immigrants in the United States (U.S) and her Diaspora and totally focusing on what this all meant to me as a Jamaican- American of African roots. As I spoke to people and became consumed with Africa, I felt as if my ancestors had called me, had alerted me to see the parallels to the demise I see in the African American communities across the U.S. in which I have lived, and the demise of my own people in Jamaica. As I looked around and did data on the different cities I lived in I saw the same trend, high poverty, poor education, poor health, lack of infrastructure in many of our communities, high unemployment and in the U.S. a vicious cycle to incarcerate people of African descent.

1 2

Millennium Development Goals in Africa: promises and progress (June 2002) Millennium Development Goals Report (2011)

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I began to realize that we were under a systemic attack. Genocide. That just as the world had watched 800,000 Rwandans being slaughtered in 100 days and wondered if it was genocide, so millions more have died with very few raising an alarm, asking for an understanding of what was happening to us as a people. That we were so busy trying to assimilate in a hostile culture that we missed the fact that we are heirs to a continent rich with resources and opportunities for all. The question then was why did we not understand this? Why were we not looking to Africa for solutions to address our worldwide demise? But when one looked to Africa all one saw was corruption, war, famine, organized chaos. Leadership structures attempting to model European governance models that after fifty years of independence, did not seem to be working. Each day as I listen to National Public Radio and BBC World News there is invariably a story on Africa, which includes women being raped and thousands of people fleeing some place because of hunger, famine, war, or political upheaval. And though I know there is much to celebrate in Africa, I know that while millions of people are destined to poverty, the small successes though causes for celebration, do not hide the reality that much is not well on the continent nor with our brothers and sisters scattered in the Diaspora. As I hungered to learn more, I reached out to many Africans in the Denver community and I learnt that all that glitters was not gold in their American existence. I began to see a disturbing pattern. I saw highly educated people doing menial jobs, many worked at least two to send money home to educate their children, take care of family members and /or build large homes they would one day return to. I thought how ironic, that these people can't come here unless they have some education or in extreme cases are refugees and so the continent that needs educated people to solve its problems loses even that through a brain drain to western countries. A brain drain that has its roots in two factors explained to me by an Indian Doctor from Kenya, who owns a healthcare company in the U.S., that I met at a Northwestern University 2011 Africa Conference. That there is a PUSH and PULL factor to the brain drain of Africa. The West and Europe offer a lot of positive things, the PULL. These are political stability, infrastructure, education, healthcare, safety, freedom of speech, freedom from hunger and starvation etc and who could resist that? But he went on to say the PUSH factor is the way Africans treat each other. The case of so many African leaders who have destabilized their own population with war, imprisonment, corruption, lack of infrastructure, poor health care, inadequate education, lack of food, water, electricity etc (all areas addressed in the MDG and Ibrahim Index). He said in his studies of Africans in the US and Europe he has found that if African professionals here were offered half their salary and an opportunity to go home, where they could live freely, not be imprisoned for having an opinion, run for office and participate in building the country, they would leave in a heartbeat.3 So the question became, what can we do to begin to address these PUSH factors, which are real and have contributed to the African Brain drain. One thing is as simple as giving dual citizenship to the African Diaspora. Such as Kenya did last year he told me, so now the Diaspora can participate in the next elections. This lack of dualcitizenship is a real barrier which a Ghanian I met in Denver had made me aware of in 2008. He wanted the U.S. President at the time to revoke his U.S. citizenship so he could go back to Ghana and get involved. Apparently at the time they were giving him a hard time about being a U.S. citizen even though he was born in Ghana. But the solution should not have been his revoking his U.S. citizenship, it should have been Ghana's leaders passing a law to make him welcome with dual citizenship. The question then became, what would it take to inspire African professionals, and Diaspora people to make that move? And so the concept of the African Marshall Plan was born, a plan later renamed the African Development Plan (ADP). A plan that looked to the European Marshall Plan for an example of what happens when a concentrated effort is made to rebuild nations.

. Conversation with Siyad Abdullahi (May 2, 2011)

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In 1947, U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall delivered a 12 minute speech that changed the world. He described the dire economic and social breakdowns that were bankrupting the European continent as it struggled to recover from the devastation of World War II. Over the next three to four years, Europe required massive amounts of imported food and essential products, but had no way to pay for them. Marshall said It is logical that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine, but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist. 4 His speech offered few details but requested that before the US could move forward with large amounts of aid, There must be some agreement among the countries of Europe about how to spend the money.The initiative, , must come from Europe. Within weeks European governments led by France and Great Britain- began drafting 5 Marshalls spending plans. By the time the Marshall plan ended in 1952- five years after Marshalls speech- the United States had invested $13.3 billion, and the years 1948 to 1952 had recorded the fastest economic growth in European history. Industrial production and agriculture exceeded pre-World War II levels.6 An editorial in LIFE, an influential weekly magazine in 1947 said the Marshall Plan is a reminder that problems do have rational solutions, that some ideas are better than others, and that it is even possible to think them up well in advance of a crisis.7 On September 19, 1946 British Statesman ,Winston Churchill, spoke of the re-creation of the European Family in a politically united Europe. The U.S. State Department also viewed European Integration as a way to promote economic independence while reducing security threats by making individual countries more reliant on each other.8 It is interesting that the U.S. found itself compelled to do this for Europe but has felt no compulsion to do the same for Africa, when Africans built its wealth through the slave trade and fits the same criteria for its stated policy, Our policy against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist.9 In fact what we have seen is a policy outlined in the National Security Council Memorandum 46, to separate African leaders and organization from uniting with the goal of the U.S. Black community exerting
4

Crawley, Vince, May 21, 2007 Marshall Plan for rebuilding Europe still echoes after 60 years- Policy directed at combating hunger, poverty , desperation and chaos . Available at America.gov on 8/20/2009
5

Crawley, Vince, May 21, 2007. Marshall Plan for rebuilding Europe still echoes after 60 years- Policy directed at combating hunger, poverty , desperation and chaos . Available at America.gov on 8/20/2009.
6

Crawley, Vince, May 21, 2007. Marshall Plan for rebuilding Europe still echoes after 60 years- Policy directed at combating hunger, poverty , desperation and chaos . Available at America.govon 8/20/2009.
7

Crawley, Vince, May 21, 2007. Marshall Plan for rebuilding Europe still echoes after 60 years- Policy directed at combating hunger, poverty , desperation and chaos. Available at America.gov on 8/20/2009.
8

Crawley, Vince. May 22, 2007. Marshall Plan placed Europe on Path Toward Unity.There must be some agreement among the countries of Europe..Available at America.gov on 8/20/2009.
9

See footnote 2.

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influence on the policy of the Administration toward Africa. 10 And a history of a US Africa policy (Pre and post independence) which was was primarily dictated by London, Paris, and Lisbon, not Washington. Rather than differentiate our policy, rather than seize upon the wave of independence that swept across the continent beginning in Ghana in 1957 a wave inspired by our independence, experience and ideals we chose to fall in line behind the former colonial powers when it came to crafting an Africa policy. In time, our engagement came to be dictated by Moscow. Containing the Soviet Union meant reacting to Soviet moves across the globe. Africa became a Cold War playground, where we played a game of backing and propping up leaders and movements that purported to be on our side, while doing everything we could to undermine those that were on the other side.11 It is also noted that Britain and Europe benefited from Africa through the slave trade, then as colonizers, then in the efforts after World War II, in their own rebuilding, and have not shown any interest in creating for Africa what they benefited from themselves. But such has been the double standard as it relates to European and American policy when it affects Africa and people of African descent worldwide. It is noted in an article on Africa since 1939, that in the years immediately after the war, Britain and France relied on African raw materials, purchased at artificially depressed prices to rebuild their shattered economies. Between 1945 and 1951, Britain made a profit of 140 million Pounds on commodity transaction with its African colonies, while injecting only 40 million Pounds in return via the Colonial Development and Welfare Acts.12 So what we see is interest in building political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist when it is for people of European descent, not others. Today many of our African leaders are ill prepared for the task of dismantling systems put into place to exploit them and lack skills to create good governance because the model thrust upon them is still based on European models that do not address our African culture. Many are just plain corrupt, a result of leaders with integrity being targeted while those willing to sell their countries resources rewarded and propped up as strong men who commit acts of atrocity against their own people while the superpowers pretend all is well, because Africas instability serves their purpose. But the world is changing, with the rise in telecommunications and access to the internet, people around the world are utilizing technology to fight for freedoms previously unheard of. They are bolstered by other peoples revolutions and realize they do have some power to change things. Though we have been mis-educated and assimilated and believe we have not accomplished great things. We have. Today we see the results of a 500 year European plan. A plan to exploit a continent and its people worldwide. Tell me one place where Africans live that everything is good? That they have good governance, safety, no poverty, opportunity, education for all and where the resources are used for the upliftment of the masses of the people? World-wide our people are disproportionately at the bottom of the social structure, our children are in need of an education and the system has found a way to re-enslave not only our minds but our bodies in the prison industrial complex where we once again work for free and are gathered with people willing to teach us things that will continue to destroy us. Our communities have been dismantled and money flows out of it instead of in. We continue to be an opportunity for others and not much for ourselves.
10

National Security Council. Memorandum 46. (SECRET) March 17, 1978. Subject Black Africa and the U.S. Black Movement. Available at http://www.finalcall.com/MEMORANDUM-46.htm 7-13-2011
11

Ward, Haskell. April 5, 2011. Speech given at University of Chicago African Students Business Conference. Available at allAfrica.com on 5/03/2011.
12

Oxford Atlas of World History- Concise Edition, P. 256. (Revised reprint 2005). London, Great Britain. Philips.

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We have allowed ourselves to become a conquered people. Our long and often brutal history to continue to linger as scars on our psyches. In a time of unprecedented freedom worldwide, our minds are still in chains. We see contracts written that allow China to come in and build roads and infrastructure in Africa, bringing in Chinese workers to do the job that Africans should be learning to do for themselves. We built the pyramids. Why have our people not learnt to leverage our resources to attract the best minds in the world to rebuild the continent? Why have we allowed the West to sell us weapons rather than transfer knowledge to develop countries? Why is the military the first thing to be built? Why not farms, schools, hospitals, homes for the people, roads, government structure? WHY IS OIL CONSIDERED A CURSE FOR NIGERIA, yet a blessing for the Arabs? Why have Africans allowed so many cruel weak men to rule? Men who steal our children's future? Why is chaos, poverty, compromised leadership and corruption acceptable in Africa and everywhere we live? Where are our leaders and what are we doing to develop them? Africa is bountiful. But it lacks leadership that has a vision to uplift the people. What makes it even worse is that those Africans who have gotten a chance to leave and be educated in the West usually fail to return to give something back to the continent. So a continent with limited resources is raped twice, first, its land and minerals then its people. People who are needed to plan, architect and build a better tomorrow. Much has to do with the long legacy of slavery, colonialism, Jim Crow in the U.S., and apartheid all over Africa. Many people have bought into a myth about themselves, that we are worthless, that we didnt contribute to anything, and thus are not worthy to be saved. A belief so ingrained that the world allowed the Rwandans genocide to occur and questioned if it was genocide. But where were Rwandas neighbors? Why did they not do something to stop this tragedy? Where was the African Diaspora and its outcry and influence? It had none, it was too shattered itself to unite around an issue of genocide in Africa and in its own communities worldwide. So millions have died because we fail to come together and find solutions for ourselves. In our inner cities black on black crime is as threatening to us as the systems which created the conditions that cause it. The people are in survival mode, sleep walking, as violence over takes many of our communities. High unemployment, miseducation, lack of economic opportunity because we fail to pull together, to understand our collective history, to plan, to strategize and unite for the betterment of our people. Why is the concept used for European integration as a way to promote economic independence while reducing security threats by making individual countries more reliant on each other,13 not used for Africa to bring peace and stability. These are worthwhile values that have no race attached to them. To ask, what can we do to become more reliant on each other? This is an issue of trust, a trust betrayed many times by individuals who were chosen for that purpose to create another deep scar on us and make us more weary when we attempt to come together to affect change. And it is hard to galvanize a people, numb from the violence perpetrated against them for so long. Sadly, many of our people do not think of themselves as Africans, do not wish to see the connection because they lack knowledge of their great history, and the examples of modern Africa has not been anything to be cheerful about, for them to want to be a part of. So the legacy of divide and conquer lives on in our subconscious hatred for anything black including ourselves and our inability to see a common future. In the words of Bob Marley, Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but our self can free our minds.

13

Crawley, Vince. May 22, 2007. Marshall Plan placed Europe on Path Toward Unity.There must be some agreement among the countries of Europe..Available at America.gov on 8/20/2009.

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So the question becomes, how will we do this? The world knows the importance of Africa, its resources and its people. Hence the attempts to destroy Black History, cover our ancient sites with water in Egypt and Sudan and distort and whiten our history in the Diaspora. And there is a new scramble, but this time China is leading the pack, looking for new land to expand its empire. They know that as long as we don't know and continue to make visionless "leaders" shape our destiny, we are open for exploitation. And so the concept of the African Development Plan (ADP) aims to address this. The ADP is about developing leadership, building friendships, collaborations, understanding, infrastructure and a knowledge base that creates foundations that we can build on. It is about helping Africa to gain the technology it needs to create the infrastructure it must have to come into the 21st century. I believe that just as Africans and others have come and built the West, that Africa can afford to import some of these minds, its Diaspora, to focus on building Africa. Africa is rich with resources, much of which never benefits its people. Much of what has happened in Africa is the result of what I call organized chaos. A history of slavery, the scramble of Africa, colonialism, and the deliberate sabotage of European countries in creating warring factions and disunity amongst the people. Not only has Africa been raped of its resources which include the millions of people lost through slavery and genocide, but it continues to be raped by unfair agreements, remnants of colonialism which have propped up corrupt regimes which have destabilized and continue to rob the people and force many to flee to the very same countries which created the conditions that they flee from. Africa needs not just a system that rewards good governance (Ibrahim Prize) but a system that develops what that is through an introspective model that focuses on Afro-centric solutions. It is insulting to take the cradle of civilization, the great knowledge that came from ancient Egypt and so many empires that grew in Africa and now behave as if we are somehow incapable of finding our own solutions. We need the courage and wisdom to identify that which really ails us, and find solutions that can work based on an African reality and not some western or Chinese view of how it would like to see Africa. It is my belief that if we dont do something, we will effectively be contributing to the continued genocide of our people worldwide. Our fate is tied together .This is the moment, and we are the people we have been waiting on. The time is now. We have an African American in the White House, and if we do not use this time wisely we will not get him and other world leaders to once and for all address Africas problems which have been deliberately caused by Western policies. I do not absolve African leaders who abuse and squander the wealth of their people, Leaders who are corrupt, and commit acts of genocide. I have studied the Perspective Model as taught by Professor Ngure wa Mwachofi while I attended Florida Gulf Coast University, and in order for us to really solve this problem we must attempt to understand the different perspectives, their role and their fears. It is like an elephant and we are blind and standing around different parts of the elephant. Someone asks each of us to describe this elephant and we do. I describe the tail, another the leg, another the snout. The question is, is any one description the elephant in its entirety? The answer is no, but when we put it all together we get a clearer picture of the elephant. Africa is the elephant and for too long we have allowed pieces of the elephant to lay claim to describing it. It has been an incomplete picture, so we have found incomplete solutions to very complex challenges. In our understanding of perspectives, we must address the fears behind each perspective or we will never find peaceful solutions. I find it hypocritical that the same countries that destabilized Africa, now attempt to judge its lack of governance and have conveniently left out their role in creating this chaos. How quickly a nationalistic leader or a Pan Africanist who was about the people and the continent is assassinated while murderers and plunderers have long reigns, often with the blessing of the West, who benefit from their corruption. I believe that
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truth will set us free and to get to that truth we must become students of our own history. We must unite to tell pieces of our story so we get the full picture. Then we will see that we are all facing the same challenges because that which oppresses us planned it this way. So what does an African Development Plan entail? The African Development Plan is a call to action to all African People worldwide to begin to study our collective history, to unite and think collectively on solutions to Africa and her Diasporas challenges. Because we are scattered worldwide with varying degrees of consciousness regarding our African identity we tend to think we are a minority. The truth is our numbers are significant, there are almost one billion people on the continent and millions more of our people are located in over 100 countries around the world. Outside of the African continent, Brazil has the largest population of people of African descent (90 million in a total population of 185 million)., African-Latinos or Afro-Latinos are to be found in large numbers in Columbia where they total 10 million in a total population of 44.3 million; in Venezuela they make up 5 million in a total population of 26 million; in Peru they make up 3 million in a total population of 27 million. People of African descent are to be found in lesser numbers in Argentina, Ecuador, Mexico, Honduras, Puerto Rica, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Guatemala and in Uruguay.14 So we see that the majority of people in the Southern Hemisphere are people of African descent who are often living in poverty both inside and outside the African continent. Since Africa is a continent abundant in natural wealth, with much of this wealth being untapped, the objective of unity is paramount in order to harness the economic wealth and skills of Africans in the interest of its people as opposed to these resources continuing to be siphoned off to foreign interests. 15 When we understand our history it will be easier to have a clear sense of purpose. A vision of where we want to be fifty years from now. We will begin to identify our assets (our people, skills and mineral resources), call for a comprehensive needs assessment of our communities and utilizes our resources to tie in the Diaspora with Africa to assist in the economic, technological, democratic reconstruction and transformation of an economically strong and united Africa. With this understanding we will know that we do not need anyone to rescue us, we are capable of rescuing ourselves. This does not preclude others helping us but we must be the mind and consciousness behind all action. It is critical for our psychological healing for us as people of African descent worldwide to unite, to understand our collective destiny. This collective action will help us to heal psychologically from all the abuse that has been inflicted on us by others and ourselves and give many of our people a new hope and understanding of the challenges we face, and a will to continue the struggle and find solutions. The issues of Africa and its Diaspora are complex. They must take into account our history, the last 500 years and the role of slavery and colonialism in creating much of the chaos that you still see today. Eleven million Africans survived the middle passage and their descendants are scattered in over 100 countries across the globe. Most are at the bottom of the social structure with no way out. Of the 500,000 who came to the U.S., you have seen people who have gone on to influence the minds of the world. Yet as a group, we are still at the bottom of the social and economic structure everywhere we live. To address this a number of things have to happen simultaneously. 1. We must form a Brain Trust of people willing to actively create and implement a comprehensive plan that addresses every aspect of Africa and her Diasporas challenges and a course of action to address

Quoted from the AISA call for Papers Page 7. Where are the African-Latinos? By Barima Adu-Asamoa in New African, December 2008, pp. 72-78.
15

14

Quoted from the AISA Call for Papers

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them. A think tank that address our history, our culture, our heritage, our languages, our challenges and shapes the direction we must take. 2. We must create an International Leadership Academy which develops current leaders, future leaders, and the next generation (youth) based on best practices and African models for all of our communities worldwide, but especially to address the issue of good governance as defined by the Ibrahim Index of African Governance. All citizens of all countries desire to be governed well. That is what citizens want from the nation-states in which they live. Thus, nation-states in the modern world are responsible for the delivery of essential political goods to their inhabitants. That is their purpose, and has been their central legitimate justification since at least the seventeenth century. The essential political goods can be summarized and gathered under five categories: Safety and Security; Rule of Law, Transparency, and Corruption; Participation and Human Rights; Sustainable Economic Opportunity; and Human Development. Together, these five categories of political goods epitomize the performance of any government, at any level. No one, whether looking to her village, municipality, province, state, or nation, willingly wants to be victimized by crime or to live in a society without laws, freedom, the chance to prosper, or access to decent schools, well-run hospitals, and well-maintained roads.16 It involves not only rewarding good leadership as the Ibrahim Prize sought to do but creating good leaders. Not only do we have to make sure our leaders understand what good governance is, we need our citizens to do the same. Raise their expectations. Imagine what we could do if were more politically astute and understood our power to influence the governments in all the countries we lived in to have favorable policies towards Africa and our communities. If we voted and participated actively in our democracies instead of allowing straw men to manipulate us. No longer shall we accept systems of government that do not address the needs of the people or that dismantle hard gained accomplishments with forced new administrations based on western models. That is the goal of the academy. The creation of African Centered leadership models. 3. We must create a database of people in the Diaspora and the skills they have so we can tap into this resource. Match the need with the resource. We must catalog the Brain Drain and understand how instability in Africa benefits everyone but us. Band- aid solutions continue to perpetuate the feeling that in order to prosper one must leave Africa. Who benefits when the best and brightest leave and give their most productive years to their adopted countries? Who benefits when African countries deny access to us, the people of the Diaspora. We have been an integral part of building and sustaining the West, we must now use that knowledge, those skills and resources we have gained in the West to return and build Africa. We must have a comprehensive needs assessment of every African country, utilizing standards included in the Ibrahim index and Millennium Development Goals. We can no longer tolerate band aid solutions for gaping wounds. Our leaders must be qualified to do the job of governing. Utilizing the results of the assessment and the web we can plan and strategize, open up competitions for solutions. Utilize the Mastermind of our people. Create a master development plan for Africa so that all actions, aid, government policies, future growth must comply with the needs identified and the stated goals. Then we can tie in researchers, and universities to finding solutions.

4.

16

Rotberg, Robert and Rachel Gisselquist. October 6, 2008. Strengthening African Governance: Results and Rankings 2008. Index of African Governance. In the News. Available at belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu on 6-152009.
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5.

We must create a database on all NGOs and organizations doing work in Africa and an assessment of their efficiency. A certification system should be developed and ineffective agencies removed. We need an online African History and Holocaust Museum. And scholars willing to collect our history in many formats. Artist, musicians, poets and cartoonist etc. We must build more educational institutions in Africa and create an African centered curriculum for our childrens education worldwide. No longer should we allow other cultures to shape their minds. We should tie in students worldwide via the web. We must learn our languages. We must support the African Unions vision for a United States of Africa, for one currency, for shared resources and a vision that includes all the people North and South of the Sahara. We are not two continents, we are one people.

6.

7.

8.

We welcome help from the world but as the Europeans were told in the Marshall Plan, you tell us how and what. We have the minds, we have the bodies, we must now have the will. I ask that you join me and sign up to be a member of the brain trust. Help fund the creation of the databases, participate in the needs assessment, recruit for the leadership academy, share your ideas for Africa with each other and seek ways to make them come true. We are only as strong as our weakest link, so let us unite and come together and work on an African Development Plan that unites all the minds of our people worldwide. i

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Abdullahi, Siyad (May 2, 2011) Crawley, Vince, May 21, 2007. Marshall Plan for rebuilding Europe still echoes after 60 years- Policy directed at combating hunger, poverty , desperation and chaos . Available at America.govon 8/20/2009. Crawley, Vince. May 22, 2007. Marshall Plan placed Europe on Path Toward Unity.There must be some agreement among the countries of Europe..Available at America.gov on 8/20/2009. Millennium Development Goals in Africa: promises and progress (June 2002) Millennium Development Goals Report (2011) National Security Council. Memorandum 46. (SECRET) March 17, 1978. Subject Black Africa and the U.S. Black Movement. Available at http://www.finalcall.com/MEMORANDUM-46.htm 7-13-2011 Oxford Atlas of World History- Concise Edition, P. 256. (Revised reprint 2005). London, Great Britain. Philips. Ward, Haskell. April 5, 2011. Speech given at University of Chicago African Students Business Conference. Available at allAfrica.com on 5/03/2011. Quoted from the AISA call for Papers Page 7. Where are the African-Latinos? By Barima Adu-Asamoa in New African, December 2008, pp. 72-78.

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