"Meredith Clark: Partnerships will bond today's Africa, America"

hat comes to mind when you think of Africa?



Do you think of a place where, in the 21st century, dark-skinned natives still "run around with no clothes on," as one would-be Teen Democrat contributor wrote. Or maybe a monolith that would "be industrialized by now if they would just stop having civil wars," as another teen with a voice for talk radio boomed in Target on Saturday.

These comments suggest that some young Americans struggle to view Africa without pity or contempt. Admittedly, my own foggy concept of Africa is of a patchwork of nations evolving past handicaps of war, famine, environmental hardship, colonization, exploitation, tribalism and apartheid.

But Africa offers new opportunities for international partnerships. And not by multinational corporations or nongovernmental organizations alone. These opportunities will be filled by the grassroots workers of today.

According to the Population Reference Bureau, in 2006, 44 percent of sub-Saharan Africa inhabitants were under age 15. They are living potential for the continent to experience a boom in growth — if health, education and development initiatives are deemed investments, and only if they are successful.

The future of our relationship with African nations is in the hands of everyday citizens — Tallahasseeans, even — elected leaders, students, clergy, kids; check-writers and physical volunteers alike. So I'm thankful for those who are working to show us that Africa is not one-dimensional; they reach from abroad to forge new economic, diplomatic and cultural ties.

Last week, Tallahassee Mayor John Marks signed a sister-city agreement with Asante Akim, a municipality in Ghana, during the seventh annual Africa Awareness Conference International conference at FAMU. At Florida State, a group of students is gearing up to for a special endeavor in Rwanda this summer. All are newsworthy events, but more importantly, they are steps toward "bridging civilizations."

One step will see 17 FSU students travel to Africa in May and June to build an $80,000 technological training center just outside Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, which is quickly becoming the most "wired" nation on the African continent.

Global Peace Exchange, an international service volunteer organization, was originally co-founded as Global Humanitarian Volunteers in 2006 by FSU students Alex Merkovic, Nick Fiore and Rhodes Scholar Joe O'Shea. Today it is an international organization with several chapters on college campuses in the United States and Europe.

Fiore, a native of Tallahassee, calls GPE's missions "ethical tourism."

"It's a chance for students to get their hands dirty with volunteerism before they enter the real world," he said.

Yohani Kayinamura, a native of Rwanda and a survivor of its 1994 genocide, is a Ph.D. student at Georgetown University who is helping to coordinate the students' visit. Kayinamura said the work has two purposes — the first to aid a nation in its quest to redeem the children of the genocide, which left nearly 1 million dead; the second is to promote intercultural exchange.

"We don't want to make it a thing where they go and come back," Kayinamura said. "We want to expose them to different views, to give them real interaction between students and members of the community."

As a member of the Rwandan diaspora, Kayinamura says he works to educate the curious about his homeland, whether they can travel there or not. He said he believes the exposure helps outsiders understand the obstacles Rwanda, and African nations like it, are up against in their work to heal, educate and modernize.

Kayinamura said he hopes that efforts like the training-school project will encourage Rwandans to become self-confident and self-reliant.

"The people there are able to achieve so much," he said, "but some feel as if someone is coming to help us." He said survivors of the genocide are still marked by the dependency that colonization created.

Such dependency, he said, has been "destructive to our society."

Fortunately, there are plenty of visionaries who see Africa as more than a swath of conflict zones. And so, with vision that replaces dependency with cooperation, they work. Student volunteers with initiative enough to finance their trip with sales from $5 T-shirts who work to help secure the future of a nation with government-surplus computers are to be commended as bridge builders. As are professors who work for years to build diplomatic ties between our city and cities in Africa. They are the visionaries who will help turn around 21st-century Africa, and perhaps our perception of it.

Contact Associate Editor Meredith Clark at (850) 599-2258 or mclark@tallahassee.com

GPE Peace Week promotes Unity

Peace Week promotes unity - News

Tallahassee gets new sister-city in Ghana- GPE adds new project location

- From Tallahassee Democrat

After a seven-year wait, the city of Tallahassee has formalized its sister-city relationship with a district in Ghana, West Africa.



Now the partners can forge ahead with the development of cultural, education and economic exchanges.

“America in itself is looking for opportunities for globalization,” said Arthur Lugisse, the deputy CEO of the Tallahassee African Sister Cities Coalition, which is the local group behind the partnership. “If you get the private and public sectors to work together, things happen.”

Already, at least 25 people, including college students and faculty, are set to visit the district this summer, Lugisse said.

And another seven Florida State university students, interested in African culture, are going to Ghana from April to June.

Mayor John Marks signed a formal agreement with George Kyei Baffour, an assembly member from the Asante Akim North Municipal District, during a ceremony at City Hall last week.

Dinah Hart, senior aide to mayor John Marks, said the partnership was approved in 2001 and was finally formalized last week because Kyei Baffour was in town for the Tallahassee African Sister Cities Coalition Conference at Florida A&M University. It was spearheaded by Willie Butler, the CEO and founder of the coalition and a professor of history at FAMU, who was a student in Ghana for two years.


“There was just never an opportunity to get the leaders of the two (governments) together,” Hart said.

Ghana, which borders the Gulf Of Guinea, gained its independence from Great Britain in 1957, the first sub-Saharan country to do so. English is its official language.

Asante Akim is one of 21 districts in the south-central region of Ashante. The district capital is Konongo-Odumase.

Asante Akim joins Ramat-Hasharon, Israel; Sligo, Ireland; Krasnodar, Russia; and
the Caribbean island of St. Maarten in having a sister-city relationship with Tallahassee.

Workshop at Northwestern University

The Global Peace Exchange will be teaching a workshop at the Global Engagement Summit about "Utilizing
University Resources" on April 17th at Nortwestern University in Evanston/Chicago, IL.

Since 2007, GPE and Northwestern's Center for Global Engagement have maintained a close relationship. This will be the second year that GPE attends the annual Global Engagement Conference, in which dozens of non-profit leaders from around the world gather to share solutions and resources to help solve some of the planets most pressing issues.

Meeting with the UN

The Global Peace Exchange will be meeting with the director of
United Nations Alliance Of Civilizations, the director of United Nations Volunteers and African Union Mission to the United Nations on April 11th.