Summit Tries To Promote Africa (5)
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Dear Dr Delanyo Dovlo:
As an African who attended one of these summits, the first one in At-
lanta in May 6-10,1998, let me share with you my insight. I didn't
attend the Washington summit. It is not a government business. It is
to some degree, a "grassroot" event for African Americans to organize
a serious effort aimed at putting Africa on the agenda of US policy:
governmental, business, and NGOs with African Americans as stake-
holders.
There have been 3 or 4 regional summits: the one in Atlanta gathered
7 Southern States [Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississipi,
South Carolina, Tennessee]. It is also an educational event: people
come, some who don't know anything on Africa, but with the will to
learn, they get educated through some facilitators and keynote speak-
ers and their own brainstorming on what they want to see done in
their region or state on Africa [what I like about Americans is their
willingness to learn].
In Atlanta, they brought Julius Nyerere, Jimmy Carter, Andrew Young,
the deposed president of Cite d'Ivoire, one or 2 prime Ministers
[maybe 1 from Namibia]. The items for discussions were around: eco-
nomic development, trade & investment, democracy & human rights, sus-
tainable development, peace & security, education & culture. In 5
days, they discussed issues based on documents prepared in advance.
The conference ended with the elections of delegates from these
states.
My guess is that there were such 3 other summits: Chicago, Dallas,
maybe one more in California. The Washington, DC was the "national
summit" with delegates from all the regional summits. This is the
typical US policy formation process. You may hear in the future the
group becoming an organized lobby playing an important role and in-
fluencing the US policy in Africa. There were whites and others, of
course. They have powerful senators and congress people on the board.
The summit website is http://www.africasummit.org
Their email is <africasummit@africasummit.org>
Watch out, in the upcoming years, you may hear more from this emerg-
ing lobby group. This is my straight answer on your question.
A footnote: interestingly enough, Mobutu's son attended the Atlanta
summit [as a private individual, why not]. He was visiting the US at
the time. Three months later was the invasion of the Congo by Rwanda
& Uganda. This was just a coincidence; he was certainly here for
other reasons. I'm from the DRC.
M. Lufuluabo, PhD
mailto:mukeba@hotmail.com
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