Rwanda: Remembrance Day.
As we many around the world take this weekend to celebrate Easter, the people of Rwanda are remembering another event. 18 years ago today, the devastating 100 day genocide started, leaving 800,000 to a million people dead.
Our thoughts are with all the citizens of Rwanda around the world as they mark this sombre day. As they remember victims and struggle with this ugly past, we hope they are resolved to move forward in the spirt of healing and national unity.
To learn about the Genocide, CLICK HERE.
61Columbia University Presents the 9th Annual African Economic Forum.
Register now! You do not want to miss this. www.aef2012.com
Columbia University Presents 9th Annual African Economic Forum
Spotlighting the emerging economic growth on the African continent, the Forum presents - Africa Reclaiming Africa: Changing the Rules of Engagement
New York, NY March 7, 2012 – Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, Business School, Law School, and School of Public Health join forces to present the 9th Annual African Economic Forum on April 13-14th, 2012 at Columbia University’s Warren Hall. From modest beginnings in 2004, the Forum has grown to be the largest Africa-focused event at Columbia with over 600 students, alumni and professionals participating last year.
This year, our objective is to spotlight the growing trend of Africans revitalizing Africa. Africans, for long, have been forced to accept the economic and socio-economic “status quo” as their future across their respective nations. Africa has been tied to foreign aid, subjected to decades-long of incumbent presidential rule in many countries, and dependent on natural resources to spur economic growth.
The tide is now turning – residents are increasingly expressing the need for change while leaders and policy makers are pushing for self-sufficiency. As a result of this transformation, Africans have become more vocal, innovative and entrepreneurial. We are now witnessing tremendous socioeconomic improvement across many countries, and economic growth fueled by local enterprises. Moreover, Africans in the Diaspora are returning home in large numbers, and at a faster pace, to participate in this movement.
This year’s conference will feature Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr. Lamido Sanusi among other notable keynotes and distinguish panelists. Mr. Sanusi successfully transformed Nigeria’s banking industry at the height of the financial crisis in 2009. His efforts lend him the title of the 2011 TIME 100 Award as one of the most influential individuals in the world.
The two-day conference will include an evening gala that brings together influential individuals concerning the African continent. Panel discussions will involve a wide range of topics including:financial service and banking, land reform, SME development, information revolution, peace and security, green revolution, public health, sovereign wealth funds, tourism, and more. Spaces are limited. Register early at http://www.AEF2012.com today! In anticipation of the event, join the conversation via #CUAEF on Twitter and Facebook http://facebook.com/CUAEF.
View the list of panels & keynote speakers.
Contact:
Website & Registration: http://www.AEF2012.com
Email: Columbia.AEF@gmail.com
Facebook: http://facebook.com/CUAEF
Twitter: http://twitter.com/ColumbiaAEF
Tasks of the Youth of the World: Thabo Mbeki
AT THE UNDP-UN HABITAT ‘YOUTH 21 GLOBAL YOUTH LEADERSHIP FORUM ON INCLUSIVE GOVERNANCE’:
NAIROBI, KENYA; MARCH 17, 2012.
Ms Rebeca Grynspan, UN Under-Secretary General,
Ambassador Sahle-Worke Zewde, Under Secretary General of the UN and Director General of the UN Office in Nairobi and other officials of the UNDP,
Ms Joan Clos, Executive Director of UN-Habitat,
Distinguished participants at this important Global Youth Leadership Forum:
I would like to pay tribute to UN-Habitat and the UNDP for convening this important Forum which has brought together young people from many parts of the world, and thank them for giving me the opportunity to make some comments which I hope you will find of some use.
In this context I would imagine that the Forum will give precedence to the views of the youth participants, rather than those among us who graduated out of the youth echelon many decades ago.
This is particularly important given the historic responsibility of the youth to determine its future.
Before I proceed any further, I would like to apologise that my comments will relate only to Africa, the area of the world with which I am most familiar. However I hope that at least some of these comments will be of general application.
In October last year, the African Development Bank, the African Union, the UN Economic Commission for Africa and the ILO launched a ‘Joint Initiative on Job Creation for Youth in Africa’.
In a statement about this Initiative, the ILO said:
“The youngest population in the world comes from Africa. Youngsters make up more than two thirds of this region’s population, yet are more likely than adults to be unemployed…This serious jobs gap needs to be addressed rapidly or else it could translate into social tensions as recently witnessed during the Arab Spring.”
It also quoted the President of the Pan African Youth Union, Mr. Ben Duntoye, as having said:
“Youth is a vital force of society. We need a paradigm shift: we must take charge of our own destinies as Africans…Young people must be given opportunities to be exposed and to obtain professional experience. We are at the forefront of changing Africa and the world. We support what happened in Tunisia. We will continue to fight for economic freedom to change the situation of (the) youth in Africa.”
I would venture to say that the entirety of the political establishment in Africa and on all Continents would readily repeat these sentiments – that the youth is a ‘vital force of society’ and that the youth must be empowered to be ‘at the forefront of changing Africa and the world’.
Indeed these are the basic theses which have informed the very rationale for the convening of this Forum, with which theses I fully agree.
Nobody can deny the reality of the African demography, which emphasizes the fact of the so-called ‘youth bulge’.
As a consequence of this, in its December 17, 2011 edition, the magazine ‘The Economist’, published an article headed ‘Miracle or Malthus?’, and said “Some Africans think they face demographic disaster, others that they could reap a demographic dividend. They will probably get neither.”
The article went further to say:
“African demography is unique. It is the only continent that will double in size, reaching 2 billion people by 2045 at current rates.”
This uniqueness derives from the fact of the ‘youth bulge’, according to which, as the ILO said, “youngsters make up more than two thirds” of Africa’s population.
In an article entitled ‘Africa’s Youthful Population: Risk or Opportunity’, Lori S. Ashford, then of the Population Reference Bureau (PRB), wrote:
“Africa’s young people will be the driving force behind economic prosperity in future decades, but only if policies and programmes are in place to enhance their opportunities and encourage smaller families…Population change is not the only force shaping Africa’s development. But failure to take advantage of the potential demographic dividend could dampen development prospects, while public policies and advocacy to enhance it could reap substantial rewards.”
When ‘The Economist’ magazine, reflecting on African demography, posed the question – ‘Miracle or Malthus?’ – it presented us with the challenge to answer an important question.
This is whether the incontrovertible fact of the African ‘youth bulge’ would serve as a positive factor in terms of our development and a better life for all our people, or a negative phenomenon, according to which the fact of the larger African population would result in the further impoverishment of our people as a whole.
I would like to suggest that it is precisely those who belong within this ‘youth bulge’, whose representatives are sitting here in this hall, who have to answer this question.
With your permission, I would like to put all this to the young Africans present in this hall in very simple terms.
Soon enough you will be involved in establishing your own families. This means that you will be producing the children who will be counted among the projected population of 2 billion Africans, which the African economy will have to serve just over 30 years from today.
The question you, and us, must answer is - what steps will Africa take from now onwards to ensure that the 2 billion Africans of 2045 enjoy a better quality of life than the plus 1 billion Africans of 2015!
I am arguing and would argue strongly that the answer to this question must come principally from our youth, they who are destined to inherit the future.
I am certain that all of us present here are familiar with the seminal statement made by that great thinker and proponent of human liberation, Frantz Fanon, many years ago - that “Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfil it or betray it.”
In this context, I would like to suggest that to answer the question about what they should do to help ensure that the quality of life of the African masses is immeasurably better in 2045 than it is today, the youth leaders and representatives present in this hall must start by deconstructing the profound statement made by Frantz Fanon I have just cited.
This statement makes the important observations that:
· in reality, contemporary social practice in all our countries relegates the new generation to a position of obscurity, an unseen and marginalised factor in terms of national development;
· the previous and older generation will act in such a manner that it will insist that its view about the future of our countries must prevail, consistent with its contribution to the historical evolution of our countries and Continent;
· the new generation, essentially represented by our youth, must define its own unique and historic contribution to the further development of our societies, distinct from the contribution of the earlier generations;
· the new generation must elaborate its own programme of action to ensure the realisation of this historic contribution; and,
· it must understand that if it fails to define its unique contribution to the development of society, as well as design the requisite programme of action to realise this contribution, it will have betrayed the mission of its generation, and therefore condemned our societies to a stultified future of imprisonment by the out-dated views and prejudices of the older generations.
As I said earlier, the so-called ‘political class’ in Africa and elsewhere on our globe will have no hesitation in affirming the proposition that the youth must be given the necessary space fully to participate in the process of leadership focused on the resolution of the contemporary global human challenges.
Even in the documentation of this Forum you will come across the perfectly correct statement that – “Active citizenship and participation of many more young people in the social, economic, and political development at community, national, and international level will continue to be the key to transformative changes in democratic governance and sustainable development.”
I would like to suggest that for this Forum to discharge its responsibilities, it must ask itself and answer the critical questions:
· in reality, does the space exist for the youth to play a key role in terms of the proclaimed transformative changes?;
· does the ‘political class’ in our countries accept the proposition advanced by Frantz Fanon which implies an inevitable tension among the tasks of successive generations?;
· is our youth positioned to discover its mission and to take action to fulfil it?;
· is it possible for our youth to discover this mission and act to fulfil it without entering into an intense conflict with the older generation which exercises power and enjoys the benefits and privileges of this exercise of power?; and,
· is the youth, the overwhelming majority of society, organised to engage this struggle, determined to secure victory and thus avoid betraying its historic mission?
I am certain that you will have understood that what I am saying is that for the youth to exercise the leadership role to whose realisation my generation claims to be committed, it must organise itself to claim this role as its right, rather than a privilege it would be accorded by the antecedent generation.
Put more directly, to ensure that it actually exercises the leadership everybody rhetorically accepts and proclaims is its due, the youth must organise and ready itself to rebel, so to speak!
It must organise and ready itself to constitute itself into a rebellion because it would obviously be unnatural that I, a member of the older generation, would easily and willingly accept that younger people, my own children, should, at best, sit side-by-side with me as co-leaders, fully empowered to help determine the future of our people.
Apart from anything else, this would mean that I would have to accept with the necessary equanimity all criticism by the new generation that what I had done as a governor had prejudiced the future of the new generation.
At the end of the very first chapter of his novel, “Anthills of the Savannah”, Chinua Achebe says of Professor Okong, an intellectual servant of tyranny – “He had his day and then went into partial eclipse. But I hardly think he is due for prison, yet.”
It surely would be that when the youth, the new generation, practically exercise the leadership we say we accept, we too, the older generation that might have done much that is wrong and inimical to the interests of the people, would first go into partial eclipse, and then, frightened, await the day when we will go to prison!
Thus, as it strives to emerge from what Frantz Fanon describes as its ‘relative obscurity’, our youth must understand that it must engage in struggle to discover and realise its mission.
Accordingly, it must organise itself to engage in struggle for the realisation of its goals.
Happily, in my view, these are no different from the goals set by the antecedent generation which our youth would succeed.
In this regard I would suggest that this Global Youth Leadership Forum should study and reflect upon the African Youth Charter which entered into force in August 2009, and is therefore binding on all Member States of the AU.
Among others, this Youth Charter recognises that “youth are partners, assets and a prerequisite for sustainable development and for the peace and prosperity of Africa with a unique contribution to make to the present and to future development…”
The Charter contains a comprehensive list of Articles which address what Africa needs to do to respond to the needs of the youth.
(Source: thabombekifoundation.org.za)
Leymah Gbowee, Nobel Peace Prize winner and peace activist in Liberia, discusses unlocking the intelligence and potential of girls.
(Source: ted.com)
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala on aid vs. trade. July 2007.
Ngozi Okonjo- Iweala: The Money Woman.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is the Minister of Finance in Nigeria and she is now also a candidate for the World Bank Presidency. Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala attended Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Previously, she held posts as Foreign Minister of Nigeria and Managing Director of the World Bank. An American has always led the World Bank while a European has led the International Monetary fund; many feel that emerging economies should have more power in the world bank as they feel its influence the most, it is good to see refreshing candidates such as Ngozi Okonjo- Iweala and Antonio Ocampo of Colombia. Okonjo-Iweala said her chief aim if picked to lead the bank would be to make it a faster and nimbler organization, able to respond swiftly to problems in developing countries. It will be interesting to see who gets the Presidency in the end and how the rest of the world reacts. We’ll be tuned in.
For more on Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, click HERE.
For more on the candidates, click HERE.
#celebratewomenwednesday
(Source: reuters.com)
African Leadership Academy: Africa’s Next Generation of Leaders.
www.africanleadershipacademy.org
On a continent where 55% percent of the population is under the age of twenty-five, it is no wonder that the “future” is a hot topic. With so many of the same problems facing African nations, it is clear how important nurturing and educating these young people will be in shaping Africa’s future. The African Leadership Academy (ALA) in Johannesburg, South Africa has recognized this. The two year secondary school identifies and develops the next generation of African leaders with the belief that ethical leadership will have an integral role in the success of the continent. The African Leadership Academy seeks to create effective, visionary and accountable leaders.
The school connects the best and brightest from all over the continent and gives them hands on leadership development coupled with rigorous intellectual stimulation. The African Leadership Academy provides a powerful network to guide and support students who are motivated and keen to make a difference. ALA provides an environment for young minds to discover themselves, collaborate with and learn with others. Students are encouraged to engage not only with other students but also with the community at large, they have accepted the challenge to make Africa a better place. Many students have already shown initiative and changed their home communities in some way and they continue to do so at ALA; they have created programs that promote food security, literacy, and mentorship amongst other things in townships around Johannesburg. .
