CONTENTS: 1. Features, 2. Advocacy & campaigns 3. Jobs & announcements
Features
All evidence points to humanity’s common origin and one destiny. Instead of history being a theater of class struggle, it is a history of globalization and a quest for unity. Africa, the cradle of humanity, must take the lead in promoting unity, not fragmentation. That unity cannot be based only on transient systems like economics and politics, but has to include deeper values and norms rooted in ontology, anthropology and belief systems.
Partition of Africa and delimitation of borders were arbitrary acts which Europeans imposed without regard to local conditions. Dismantling colonial borders is therefore a veritable pan-African project. Pan-Africanism should be seen as a people-to-people relationship rather than one among heads of state, intellectuals or western tutored elites.
New elements of Africa Rising hucksterism emerged at this year’s World Economic Forum in Kigali, including a child-like fascination with “Fourth Industrial Revolution cyber-physical systems” that will supposedly allow Africa to leapfrog the world, indeed to “lead the way”, because the continent is “the world’s fastest growing digital consumer market.” Reality check: fewer than one in three Africans have home electricity, and just one in five use the internet.
Towards charting a path to the Ubuntu village tree
Isn’t the time ripe for the African Union to create the space for true Africanisation of its institutions and ownership of its processes by the people at home and in the diaspora? There should be enough resources and incentives for all people to participate in the Pan-African project in our villages, communities, constituencies, campuses, and workplaces.
Members of the Pan-African Parliament are handpicked by the executive of their country – by the same heads of state who retain the ultimate power at the African Union. And as if that is not bad enough, PAP is only a consultative organ. Efforts to change this, so that the people of Africa can have meaningful representation, continue to be resisted. African people must work hard for the transformation of this important AU organ.
Today the African Union faces formidable development and security challenges
Only an upsurge from the left and anti-imperialist forces can fulfill the visions of a true united Africa in line with the work of Nkrumah, Gaddafi and other revolutionary leaders. The worsening economic crisis due to the decline in commodity prices and western sponsored destabilization is reversing the advances made in regard to growth and development over the last decade.
Pan-Africanism is not just a nice-sounding idea. It is a firm personal commitment to the lives of the peoples of Africa. When the latest Ebola crisis broke out in West Africa in 2014, Dr. Atai-Omorotu gathered some medical personnel in Uganda and headed to the region that everyone was running away from. She helped save many lives – only for her to die of pancreatic cancer two weeks ago.
The question of leadership of intergovernmental organizations in Africa has received inadequate attention in public discourse. The West African bloc ECOWAS has far-reaching prescriptions on how the organization’s top leadership should be constituted, but the provisions have often not been strictly observed. Politics and personal factors usually get in the way.
Africa is not yet free, despite formal independence. Most of the continent’s nations are in the grip of criminal regimes whose leaders belong in jail for widespread human rights violations. But those leaders always stand with one another to defeat justice.
Grabbing of public land by powerful individuals continues in Kenya, despite commendable efforts that have been made over the years to end this menace. The National Land Commission has the primary responsibility of protecting all public land. But Kenyans should also take it upon themselves to safeguard public land by assisting the commission to discharge its mandate.
Advocacy & campaigns
At last, a major news organisation in the United States/West has come out to challenge the deafening silence that has pervaded the world over the genocidist Muhammadu Buhari regime in Nigeria, installed in office in March 2015 by the David Cameron and Barack Obama administrations.
Jobs & announcements
Call for Submissions
The State of the Union Coalition (SOTU) calls out for submissions of articles from journalists working in the 10 African countries SOTU has membership; Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Senegal, Kenya, Rwanda, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa and Tunisia. The competition is open to African journalists reporting on Human Rights and Governance issues in the print and digital media. Deadline: 31st May 2016 at 11:59 (GMT +3).
The Women’s Human Rights Institute (WHRI), co-founded by internationally renowned Costa Rican feminist jurist and activist Alda Facio, is undertaking a two-year research and advocacy project to promote participation in data gathering for the upcoming thematic report of the UN Working Group on Discrimination against Women in Law and Practice (UNWGDAW) on “good practices” in addressing discrimination and promoting women’s self-empowerment. The project will focus on identifying potential “good laws” and/or important case law that promote women’s substantive equality, and developing case studies that delve into the content of the laws, their impact and implementation mechanisms, as well as the complex set of factors and actors involved in their creation and implementation.
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