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I AM A HUMAN: A CELEBRATION OF OUR COMMONNESS
Chris Odindo: full text from a recent forum panel conversation at
the London Business School
Growing
up, the image of a young black man wearing a placard with the words
“I am A Man” has always made me ask myself why someone should ever
need to so publicly reaffirm their identity. In recent years and
certainly as I have grown older the act has ceased to mystify
especially as I have come to gradually realise the lack of a strong
collective identity amongst those of us that live outside our home
continent, otherwise known as the Diaspora, beyond our obvious
lineages to the land of our forefathers. This, to my mind, is
something that needs not just establishing but also constant
reaffirmation. Indeed, despite recent promises of an African
renaissance, we as a people continue to largely be invisible or at
best recipients of token invitations to discussions of political and
socio economic matters that affect us to the greatest extent. My
view is that we should borrow from that placard wearing image and
develop a platform that serves as a symbol of our common collective
identity as Africans living away from our homelands. A platform from
which we can start to engage in a much more bolder, more ambitious
and grander scale with the socio economic developmental matters that
impact directly on our peoples. A platform that celebrates our
commonality not only in the struggles and anguish found within the
daily grind of life but also in the exuberances and hopes that
remain a surprising fabric binding many of our broken societies.
Exuberances and hopes so evident in the unbridled optimism of
grown-ups braving the morning chill to seek casual employment in yet
another day of rekindled hope, and in breakout games of children’s
rag tag football in the back streets slums of Lagos or the small
towns around lake Victoria when the drums of war stop and we allow
them to reclaim their childhoods. Yes, a platform that celebrates
our common sense of belonging each time we all go back home and that
of lounging each time we are away for long periods of time.
For those of us that work and live outside our home continent, which
I imagine is the majority in this room, we should not only celebrate
our commonness as in what is happening here today on this occasion
but go beyond mere annual celebrations towards the engagement of our
social and professional resources into tangibly positive outcomes
that we the Diaspora can all bring to our tableau of commonality in
areas of human advancement, eradication of poverty and the paucity
of hope that besets vast portions of our home continent even as we
through this day debate and discuss our common pasts, interlocked
presents and intertwined futures. I am optimistic about this future
for many reasons not least of all being my strength of belief that
we are the generation that Africa has been waiting for; a generation
largely unencumbered by our colonial pasts and excesses of the first
African governments; a generation with the greatest numbers of both
worldly wise and widely travelled individuals as well as greatest
collective intellect ever seen from the continent; a generation that
has helped usher in an age of unprecedented knowledge and
information virtually on tap through modern technological advances
such as the internet and mobile telephony. Indeed, a generation that
has started to bear fruit to growing numbers of self sacrificing and
altruistic development conscious individuals that underpin one of my
central points today: that time has now come to move away from the
default narrative of Diaspora being a negative drain on the
continent towards strong considerations that it is truly one of the
continent’s most powerful weapons for development and capacity
building.
Yes, one may ask me why I have a sense of optimism given the well
known dire straits we have gradually found ourselves in; amidst
rising inequality and poverty that grind down our kinfolk in masses.
Indeed, why the optimism given too that most of us here today have
been to certain extents complicit in the outward flight of our
continent’s best intellectual resources in what is normally known as
the Brain Drain, which not wishing to belabour the point I would
argue ought to be considered as a Brain Gain rather than Drain. Yes
indeed, why have a sense of optimism given the staggeringly
statistical fact that Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region in the
world where the number of people living in abject poverty continues
to grow exponentially with, in reality, more than 313 million people
across Sub-Saharan Africa living on less than one dollar a day: and
no end in sight to increasingly debilitating poverty and inequality
exacerbated by an inequitable globalisation agenda. Why be
optimistic especially with the latest statistics showing that over
60 per cent of the 35 million people infected with HIV/Aids globally
are in sub-Saharan Africa – with 2.5 million new infections alone in
the last one year.
To me the optimism stems from the fact that there is a
n
ever increasing number of individuals committed to making that
difference in the lives of our fellow Africans back home. These
individuals, some of them here with us today are drawing on their
socio-economic and professional networks for the benefit of our
kindred: from social entrepreneurs in western boardrooms to small
initiatives in far flung places like Zambia’s Shimwa Lwanzi; from
powerfully influential Africans in global corporations, like those
here today sharing the stage with me, with the will and capability
to forcefully bring forth Africa’s development agenda to similarly
influential albeit at much smaller scales leaders in local
communities from the banks of the Limpopo river to the rolling
forests of the Congo; from slums of the Sierra Leonian capital
Freetown to former mining towns in rural Angola. Certainly stories
of self sacrifices for the greater social good and societal
advancement abound and are increasingly common, although not as much
as one would wish for. I should though mention the case of one
particular individual who has eschewed a lifestyle of relative
comfort to live in the slum community of a place known as Odunga in
Kisumu, using his expensive US education and experience to help slum
dwellers establish small development projects and other self help
co-operative initiatives. He could easily have chosen to stay in the
US and look back at, of even speak of, the African continent with
fondness and nostalgia; but no he choose not to. He and many others
like him should add fuel to our optimism, and not just that, but
also act as catalysts to changes in the direction of travel we as a
people need to take. Much like these individuals we should strive to
replace the paucity of hope in existence across the continent with
the audacity of hope. Indeed, we must bear in mind this simple
truth: one can never be truly free until we are all truly free and
with that freedom a ringing of the liberty bells all across the
valleys, the plains, and hills of our beloved motherland; and even
then only when we as a people collectively proclaim a universal
freedom from grinding poverty, disease, ignorance, bad governance
and economic enslavement. This is a simple truth which should not be
ignored if we are ever to see the woeful disparities and iniquities
of globalisation condemned to history: iniquities and incongruities
which we should all find morally repugnant.
And
that ladies and gentlemen is really the centrality of my argument
today. Some of us have started down the path towards
institutionalising a development agenda to fuel what I firmly
believe is an African renaissance. All we ask is that you join our
direction of travel towards a better and prosperous continent not
only for our current fellow humans but later generations too. All it
takes is for you to stand up and say ‘hey “I Am a Human too”, how
can I help’. An act that would not only signal pride in our communal
ancestral roots but also be a collective point to which others can
come stand by in celebration of our commonness and to strengthen our
common endeavours as Africans. But most of all it would be a strong
signal that the paucity of hope taken as a given by some for far too
long can indeed be turned into an audacity of hope.
