Africa’s needs ‘the same as people in Appalachia’

Forum at Shenandoah University attracts crowd of 200 from area, Maryland, W.Va., Washington

By Jason Kane on March 30, 2009
© The Winchester Star

Winchester — The question was simple enough: Do people in Africa wear clothes?

But it showed ignorance and was startling enough to push Jona Masiya — who was substitute teaching at Handley High School — to put together a local forum on Africa.

After several months of planning, a panel of heavy hitters from the international aid community traveled to Shenandoah University Saturday for the "Tri-State Africa Forum: Continuing Challenges and Hope" — an eight-hour discussion designed to increase local understanding of the continent and boost engagement with development efforts there.

They came from the World Bank, the United States government, Amnesty International, and a variety of faith-based international groups to share their thoughts with a racially-mixed audience from Winchester, Washington, Liberia, Tanzania, Kenya, and Ethiopia.

Their resounding refrain: Africa matters.

"It is not just a place of crushing poverty," said Stephen Hilbert, a policy adviser on Africa for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. "Yes, it exists there. But I could not have spent half of my professional career there if that's all that existed."

The panelists touched upon how the continent sank to such a desperate low, U.S.-Africa relations, human rights, and empowering approaches to development.

Despite the bloated-stomach, war-ravaged images of a continent on the brink of collapse, many countries in Africa are at peace, they said — and are busy developing strategies of culture and governance that the western world would do well to note.

Many problems remain, but the problems are basic if sustainable and realistic partnerships can be formed.

"Africa's primary needs are three things: food, housing, and health care. The same as people from Appalachia," said Emira Woods, co-director of foreign policy at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington.

Still, building relationships can be difficult, given the long and sordid history of U.S. involvement with the continent, beginning with slavery and progressing into modern times, they said.

In the last several decades, in particular, the United States has helped prop up some of the most brutal and plundering of African regimes — the apartheid clan in South Africa, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), and Angola's Jonas Savimbi, to name a few — simply because their leaders supported U.S. interests.

Today, resource-related violence is occurring in many countries. And not just regarding the much-discussed "blood diamonds," but over more basic commodities like cobalt and coltan — critical ingredients in batteries and cell phones, respectively.

Other internationally linked controversies are now stirring bloodshed in Somalia, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Zimbabwe. Skyrocketing food prices — rice costs alone tripled in 2008 — are forcing millions of people into poverty.

So what's a middle-class working family in the Shenandoah Valley to do about all this?

"Our conversations can't move the ball unless members in our Congressional districts are writing letters," said Eric Munoz, international policy analyst with the Washington-based group Bread for the World.

Call the White House, call a senator, lobby for changes, read, and speak up, because most of the problems ravaging Africa are internationally driven ones, they said.

Hilbert, of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said aid efforts in Africa have experienced as many missteps as successes — often because foreigners think they know what's best for developing nations, despite differences in culture, faith, and resources.

There must be African solutions to African problems, he said.

"We have to approach partnerships by saying, 'These are your problems, these are your challenges and you have to come up with some of the solutions. But we would like to walk with you through that,'" he said.

It's the wrong mindset to think that the West needs to 'save' Africa, he added. "People save themselves."

Besides, in many cases, African governments can teach the West a better way forward, Woods said. As an example, she noted that only 17 percent of the members in the U.S. Congress are women, compared to 55 percent in Rwanda.

"While we are looking for solutions [to Africa's problems], we also need to be looking for solutions to our own problems," said Msia Clark, human rights advocate with Amnesty International. "We need to look at what's wrong with us and what's wrong with the way we look at Africa."

The session concluded when Imani Countess, the senior director for public affairs for the TransAfrica Forum, asked everyone to incorporate the phrase "tell no lies and claim no easy victories" into their work.

"Anyone who comes before you and says, 'Africa's problem is X' is not very well-informed," she said. "If we are to build a partnership, we must accept the complexities, the contradictions, the richness, and yes, all of the negativities, as well."

About 200 people from the local area and elsewhere in Virginia attended the daylong forum, along with others from D.C., Maryland, and West Virginia.