"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