The Call For Diaspora Contributions To African Development
MEMBERS & VISITORS:
The Call For Diaspora Contributions To African Development
There is growing grass roots support, especially among young Africans, for encouraging Africans within the diaspora to return to the continent. They acknowledge that the skills, experience, money, diversity, and knowledge held by the diaspora will be invaluable to the development of Africa’s future.
A Kenyan student currently studying in the United States (andeyo1 on YouTube) had this to say:
“I was born in western Kenya and moved to the US after high school to attend college, I was moving from an Africa village to one of the biggest cities in America, the only city I had been to was Kisumu, the third largest city in Kenya. My first trip to Nairobi was to process my passport and second time was to pick my visa and fly out.
MY first culture shock in US was the heavy burden that came with my new acquired identity, I never fully realized I was Black until I landed in America, I knew my skin was physically black and so was everybody around me in my village and we knew we had other people whose skin color was brown and white. Most of these white and brown people in Kenya lived in cities and once’s in a while we would have one living among us in the village as peace corps or NGO worker. The hierarchy of my identity was very clear, I knew I belonged clan, ethnicity (tribe), nationality a Kenyan and an African. I was not totally blind to Eurocentric racism because my father and his fellow generation had told me what it was like in colonial Kenya and I was living in neocolonial Kenya but nothing prepared me to the intensity and pervasiveness of American racism, boy it is out this world, it is deeply imbedded into American DNA.
My first encounter with racism was in Walgreen store, there were this open samples of cologne perfumes for promotion and people coming in were trying them and I went and tried one and I saw this white guy looking and following me around. I paid for my detergent soap and on my way out this dude stopped me took me to back store and parted me to my bare skin in very humiliating way and found nothing, he told me the reason was because I was opening store merchandise. The second time I was walking from my studio to school with loaded bookbag, before I knew it, I was surrounded by two police cruiser, with guns blazing I was told to put my hands up and lean In front of the car, what saved me was my school bag, full of books and onlooking white students shouting he is our new African student. I was told I fitted a profile of a guy who had mugged a lady across the street. One of the white student later told me to watch my dressing, I could be mistaken for inner city bad people, who are the inner city bad people, why were these whites shouting to police he is an African student. The police saw one thing a young N — but these students wanted the police to know he was a naïve innocent harmless type of a N—. A lot Africans in US fall for this trap of divide and rule, run into white suburbs only to run into racial trouble later there. It does not matter where you are from as longer as you have black skin you a target of racism.
We tend to dweller or sometimes confuse individual prejudice with racism, it not about somebody calling you an N word, it is the systemically institutionalized racism that you encounter in American institutions, in policing, banking, housing, schooling (education) and at work (cooperate America). It takes a long time for immigrates to understand this level of racism. Like many immigrates I did not understand the nuance of American race history, slavery, reconstruction, Jim crow and civil rights movement but I was a lucky immigrant. I arrived in US at the beginning of June and the start of my fall semester was in September, I had a lot time to burn and luckily the guy who had moved from my studio was an African American scholar, he left behind two boxes full of African American books and magazines. I had ebony, essence, Chicago defender, Black dispatch, negro world, Final call, freedom Journal and any AA books you can think about. I went through a lot books but three stood out, the Malcom X autobiography by Alex Haley, Black boy by Richard Wright and Afrocentrism by Molefi Asante. These books changed my trajectory, though I was science major, anytime I would have latitude of picking a humanity or social science course I would always seek advice of AA department. Molefi Afrocentric and Eurocentric worldview was powerful and draw me to the school of Afrocentrism at Temple University Philadelphia University, I become more African in US than when I was in Kenya.
While many Africans troop to US with a lot ignorance about the state of AA in US, they encounter a lot AA with little knowledge of Africa and that is the born of friction. My advice for Africans in US to seek and learn from AA who understand the coded system and for AA to learn about the continent and those with means to visit or relocate to African. Its exciting time to see AA coming back home, we need each other and we have a lot to give to each other for benefit of future generation.”
We have published other informative posts on Invention School’s website which may interest you. To view our entire catalog of over 800 posts go to inventionschool.tech/category/blog/ or use our handy search tool to find topics of interest to you.
Mechanical/Solar Engineer, Prof. Oku Singer
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