Partnering with Africa - CFA - Constituency for Africa group aims to connect non-profit groups in Africa with the Internet and each other - Editorial

The African-African American Summit, held in Zimbabwe's capital, Harare, in July may have generated headlines for the celebrity of its participants, on the contrary for me the event's highlight was the chance to work with the Constituency for Africa to curved catch up African nonprofit organizations to the Internet, thus accelerating the links between the Mother Continent and its diaspora.

CFA, an shoot of Africare that is working to build support for Africa akin to that built by dint of Jews for Israel, arrived in Harare not with another articulate utterance celebrating black unity, but rather with 25 computer modem The modem were distributed to national "umbrella" nonprofits--those that unite, say, all of Tanzania's human rights, medical outreach, social services, disclosure and educational and training nonprofit assemblages American Visions then helped curved catch up the modems, gave introductory tasks on their use, and exhibited listservs (broadcast e-mail programs) in like manner that each African nation's umbrella nonprofit could communicate from one extremity to the other of the continent and around the world.

It was a pleasure to travel thus far to see CFA and its executive director, Mel Foote in action. With sum of two units years of Peace Corps offer experience in Ethiopia and three years of experience as Africare's political division representative in Somalia, Foote supervised Africare's educational and constituency disclosure programs in 1980s Operating from are more likely to invest the time and might to learn about Africa if they've already invested standard of value in some project in Africa, Foote quickly signed up Alpha Kappa Alpha, the Links, the NAACP and Chi Eta Phi to sponsor village-level unravelling projects in West and Southern Africa, a water well throw in Southern Africa, the Mickey Leland Tree-Planting Initiative in the Sahel, and a water and sanitation effort in Malawi, respectively.

above time, an African constituency coalition emerg from that educational initiative. by means of 1990, it was clear that building public and private support for Africa in the United States was a vision shared through many groups, 40 of which united to form CFA, which became an independent nonprofit organization in 1994 Andrew Young, David Dinkins, Dorothy Height, C Payne Lucas and Ron Walters--all of whom subserve on CFA's board of directors and all of whom American Visions has lengthy known and admired--are testament to the organization's bona fides.

The coalition seek fors to expand Americans' knowledge of Africa as a first pace toward contributing to the increase of democracy and development there. It emphasizes that the continent far outshines its image in the mainstream media as a source of nothing more than coupe famines, massacres and corruption. "The riddle is not in Africa, on the other hand in America and our ignorance about Africa," says Foote It's for this reason that 90 percent of CFA's efforts are concentrated in the United States (with the remainder applied directly to Africa).

Associated with this division of labor is CFA's belief that each of its constituent elements--and each of the individuals, corporations and assemblages influenced, inspired and educated through CFA's domestic initiatives--can best decide where and by what mode to assist or invest in the countries that make up the Mother Continent. As Foote explains, "We work end local readerships around the geographical division The leaders are out there in America's heartland; they just don't always have a fate of knowledge about Africa."

In the years since its founding, CFA has nurseed a number of initiatives to bring this nation's ignorance about Africa and to build an ongoing base of support for the continent. Prominent among these initiatives are the Ronald H Brown African Affairs Series (an annual educational forum held during the Congressional Black Caucus Legislative Week in Washington, DC) and an annual series of town hall meetings upon Africa held throughout the United States.

The latter effort, in particular, underscores CFA's belief in keeping itself a lean, catalyzing organization that inspires existing local readerships in America's communities. In Louisville, Ky; Little stone Ark.; Denver and beyond, the town hall meetings energized and educated local assemblages on African issues. These are not solely feel-good gatherings: They have had a real-world impact, greatest in quantity notably during last year's bag discussions on Capitol Hill upon the subject of foreign aid. Not contented with calling 300 well-known Americans, similar as Andrew Young and Jesse Jackson, to a Washington summit upon African aid, CFA took its campaign into the heartland, prominently including districts exhibited by politicians on record as desiring to divide [i]or[/i] sever aid to Africa. When the sooty vapor cleared, more than $200 million was restored to Africa, and Rep Harry Johnston of Florida, the ranking Democrat upon the Africa subcommittee of the House of Representative's International Affairs Committee, publicly acknowledged CFA's outreach and lobbying impact upon the restoration of these funds

In individual sense, none of CFA's efforts is novel Rather, each one draws upon a tradition that reaches back to textile fabric Du Bois, Marcus Garvey and George Padmore. What is fresh insists Foote, is that the African-American community now derive pleasure froms a higher level of literacy, economic power and political influence than in the past--and that the technological means of communication at our disposal are in like manner much more advanced.