The concept of the Africa Solidarity Council is a simple one: Since Destiny has brought very many Africans together in a foreign land and made it possible for us to interact more than we did while in Africa, it behooves us to cultivate friendship with one another, from Egypt to the Cape and from Gambia to the Horn, and build trust along the way with one another. From this friendship, we will establish ties with the future leaders of Africa when they return to their respective nations and assume the mantle of leadership, ties which will blossom into positive activities that will promote travel and communication, industry and commerce, unity and security among the peoples of Africa, and make for economic development, progress, and enhanced quality of life for our people. As we concentrate on building this lasting friendship ties, let us focus and ask the more relevant question: What kind of a leader for Africa and her people shall one make? What kind will I make? Against this backdrop, the Council will (a) provide insight to understanding the historical analysis of past leadership performance, (b) provide forums for reflecting on the present leadership performance, and (c) provide mechanisms for acquiring social and moral education for effective management and leadership performance. This is our self-imposed charge, the essence of our being.

The goals of The Africa Solidarity Council are short and long-term. The short-term goal is to provide the members of the African immigrant and non-immigrant community in the Washington metropolitan Area and beyond the support and resources they may need to overcome the social, psychological, and socioeconomic problems African immigrants and non-immigrants living in the United States face, recognizing that we face a variety of challenges. Specifically, the Council will provide social, health, educational, legal, counseling, and employment support services to the members of the African immigrant and non-immigrant community within the Washington Metropolitan Area and throughout these United States. The Council will also provide information and encouragement, where necessary and appropriate, throughout the difficult times. The Council categorically states that The Africa Solidarity Council is more than just another African organization, association or corporation. It is a council of brothers and sisters, of neighbors and friends, and most important, it is a council of Africans because we are Africans and therefore very proud to be involved in improving the quality of lives of the members of the African immigrant and non-immigrant community.

The long-term goal is to kindle the spirit of pan-Africanism and use it to build a united Africa by developing a new crop of African leadership for continental cooperation, development, unity, and security. Also, to use this spirit to cultivate and empower this new kind of African leadership that sees coexistence with one another, one nation with another, as a reality. Thereby, creating or cause to be created institutions that will foster education of the mind, political transition and succession, due process and citizens’ rights, progress, and security.

In its vision, the Council foresees a continent of nations that one day may become "The United Countries of Africa" (UCA), where easy access to communication links (road, air, and land), uninhibited travel across national boundaries by all citizens of the continent, and uninhibited trade and commerce across national boundaries will become a reality. The Council posits that the colonial division of Africa wrought a great disservice to Africa and to the African. Consequently, we are forced to define ourselves according to our colonial attachments to the detriment of our cultural similarities. However, the Council believes that in spite of this handicap our enormous similarities must be cultivated and nurtured for our own good the development of Continental Africa. To do this, it is essential we build bridges and establish friendship ties with one another as Africans, realizing that the knots of African solidarity and friendship we tie with each other together today, even in foreign land, may be the cornerstone of a new leadership for positive progress on the continent.

The Founding principles of the Africa Solidarity Council rest on the spirit of pan-Africanism. This needs to be reinvigorated and allowed to become our guiding light as we seek to re-build our Africa. This spirit will compel both immigrant and non-immigrant Africans to come together in unity and build solidarity with one another in order to advance our common interests. As a community that does not possess any clout, political or economic, we are marginalized. We live and operate in factions, are very easily taken advantage of, even our rights oftentimes abused. We need solidarity! From the solidarity we have developed, while on a foreign soil, we will be able to forge a friendship with one another. This friendship, when allowed to permeate our consciousness, will encourage us to recognize our common interests rapped up in our beautiful and dynamic diversity. As the leaders of Africa of tomorrow, the friendship we have developed today will help us understand and accept our diversity as a pragmatic instrument for both national and continental unity. Our leaders will then work to create, in Africa, a lasting and viable Africa where peace, unity, and progress will reign.

The philosophy of the Africa Solidarity Council, Inc. is twofold: First, the building of Africa's new leadership can be achieved through friendship, trust, and service. Second, the encouragement of discussion through debate and dialogue with the understanding that we may be passionate in the defense of our position while being respectful of one another. No matter how we argue and debate, we must not impugn the integrity of each other or become derisive with our comments. But most important, as those who aspire to become public servants, let us know when to hold and when to fold and to do so with grace. If you hold because your position has won out, do each with magnanimity and deep respect, knowing that coalition is essential to achieving our ultimate goal. If you fold, well, see it as an opportunity to sharpen your debating skills and the need to do more home work for the always next round. Whether we hold or fold, our interests will be better served when we eschew dogmatism because the strength of a community lies in the ability and willingness of its members, in spite of their varying differences of opinions and ideas, to work together for the general good of all.

The Founding of the Africa Solidarity Council is also a simple one. It began on October 9, 1995. On this day a questionnaire was mailed to 75 African immigrants and non-immigrants, inviting them to a discussion of our place in the larger society, our role in shaping Africa's future, and the need to recreate the spirit of pan-Africanism in the pursuit of friendship, trust, and service as the eventual vehicle for building Africa=s new leadership. All the respondents agreed with the ideas outlined in the questionnaire. However, only nine people cared enough to turn up for the initial meeting. The discussion went very smoothly as every speaker saw this as an opportunity for an effort that is long over due. The highlight of the meeting was the recognition that our immigrating to the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Australia has become a blessing in disguise, and that Destiny has brought the immigrant and non-immigrant African together in a foreign country, away from Africa where we hardly knew ourselves other than as sojourners from one country to another in search of bounties to satisfy life's wants and desires. All of a sudden, though it seemed, it dawned upon us that we are Africans with plentiful cultural and educational similarities. Indeed, we are a people with common pain, joy, expectations, and aspirations and the earlier we began to act as one in the pursuit and protection of our interests the better we will be. The minutes of that discussion were mailed to everyone who had also received the initial letter of invitation. We met again on November 11, 1995 and again on May 18, 1996.

The kernel of the May 18, 1996 discussions was a vision of an Africa where her people would leave her simply to travel to other lands in quest of knowledge, or merely to satisfy the curiosity of travel and discover other lands. Not an Africa where her sons and daughters are deserting her simply because they want to escape from hunger, strife, persecution (religious or political), and in search of what might end up to become comfortable nothingness. We envision immigrant and non-immigrant Africans as a community where most of her needs can be internally met. For instance, if the immigrant/non-immigrant african needs employment, those of us in public and private enterprise would provide or help provide employment; if you are in need of legal services, our lawyers would be there; if you need medical attention, our doctors would be there too; if you have tax or accounting needs, our accountants will be there just as well; and if you have just arrived, there will be someone to teach and guide you on the importance of maintaining good credit; if you hunger for authentic African meal and desire to eat out, there are our numerous restaurants to serve you; or if you prefer to use the services of your kitchen, the condiments can be purchased from one of our numerous African stores; and if you have fallen victim to the taxing demands of our environment, our social safety net will be there to offer a chance at a new beginning. One for all, All for one. Precisely. Tasteful medicine for solidarity! We discussed other issues that challenge and test the leadership prowess of the African, such as militarism and distrust of each other. We met several times more, on June 1^st, 1996, June 14^th, 1996, June 28^th, 1996, and August 5^th, 1996. At one point the number of persons attending the discussions grew to fifteen.

The June 14^th, 1996 meeting was remarkable. Participants at that meeting voted to take the first step toward granting both meaning and identity to our collective ideas. We now have a name to uphold and a mission to accomplish, the mission of empowering ourselves, while here, both politically, socially, and economically. The name we have chosen, The Africa Solidarity Council, is an embodiment of this ideal. The ultimate goal, however, is to build coalitions for the eventual task of rebuilding our Africa. Unfortunately, the next formal meeting, scheduled for the 5^th of August, attracted only three people. However, these three persons remained determined and unshaken in their resolve to see Africa Solidarity Council become a viable instrument for the attainment of Africa's solidarity.

Events around the continent, even in the world today, may seem to suggest that Africa is abandoned and forsaken by its people. Few of our forebears stood to fight for her but were defeated because we lacked unity. We lacked unity because we lacked reason to be, a common purpose. We were defeated because we defeated ourselves first. Apparently, we disowned ourselves and accepted others and their own in place of ourselves and our own. As a people, we seem adrift both mentally and culturally, quick to bask in other people's Asunshine that was created by the fathers and mothers of their children. If we continue to fail to act today for Africa's sake and for the sake of our posterity, we will become a people with a humanity not worth protecting@ and therefore end up with a history not worth mentioning@ and we would have failed to create a sunshine for our sons and daughters, the sons and daughters of our sons and daughters, the sons and daughters of the sons and daughters of our sons and daughters, ad infinitum.

Today, Africans should be about the business of rebuilding the nations of our continent, and truly become a member of the world community of nations with unique contributions to it and capable of providing for its people and deserving of earned respect from the community of nations. This means having a set of standards that promote identifiable interests and objectives, assume responsibility for ourselves and our development, and in the end, become a community too stable to be unproductive, too dynamic to be static, too dignified to be unimpressive, and too African to be Western.@ I commit myself to this process and I intend to do so with the encouraging and stimulating words of the late Patrice Lumumba, We are Africans and wish to remain so. We have our philosophy, our customs, our traditions which are as noble as those of other nations. To abandon them merely to embrace those of other peoples would be to depersonalize ourselves. Our objectives . . must be to unite and build our nation [Africa] through mutual understanding". Will you?

Whereas, Solidarity is unity (as of a group or class) that produces or is based on community of interests, objectives, and standards;

Whereas, Council is a federation of or a central body uniting a group of organizations for a common purpose;

And whereas, our purpose is to rid Africa and her people the cankerworm of complacency. To rid Africa and her people the politics of sectionalism, tribalism, ethnicity, and self-hate. To work and walk together, man, woman, and child, with the knowledge that what afflicts one afflicts all, and a thing of joy to one is a joy shared by all. Let us do, therefore, even in foreign land, what other groups do: be cohesive and viable and help make a difference at home. If we will do this, we will be on the side of Africa today and tomorrow for we will, then, have begun the process of re-building an Africa where current national boundaries become mere state lines that allow its people to travel on the smooth road of oneness toward the African city of unity and progress!

Therefore, by the action of the persons here gathered, having carefully considered the foregoing, agreed to name our Cause, The Africa Solidarity Council, and cause it to become our name, an Idealism whose time has come, and a name which will give us, here and henceforth, an identity befitting of our ideals and objectives.

The Africa Solidarity Council was incorporated in the District of Columbia on March 26^th, 1997 as a nonprofit corporation under the 501 (c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code. The Corporation is non-membership, non-sectarian, non-ethnic, and non-denominational. All the affairs of the Corporation are directed by the Board of Directors and each member of the Board, who serves as a volunteer, administratively directs one of the nine aspects of the corporation's functions. Members of the Board of Directors are selected from the Four Corners of Africa. The Corporation seeks volunteers to assist in getting out the word about our existence and services provided. Recipients of the services the Corporation provides are African immigrants and non-immigrants. There are no fees charged to the recipients of these services.

Thank You

Yours African.

In the Next Issue: The Need for African Solidarity Through Friendship and Service: Doing so Even in a Foreign Country by Act of Destiny

Information concerning its tax-exempt status can be obtained by contacting the Internal

Revenue Service on

Information concerning its Charitable Solicitation Registration can be obtained by writing or calling: The

Department of Consumer & Regulatory Affairs, Business Services Division, 614 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20001

Back to Newsletters Page