— as curtain comes down on IDPAD Summit

AS the International Decade of People of African Descent (IDPAD) Summit 2018 came to an end Sunday, the body identified its plans for the future through a presentation of the strategies discussed during several roundtable sessions.
The final presentation took place at the Marriott Hotel on 11th March, when the experts who moderated the roundtable discussions reviewed the issues and solutions addressed in their groups.

The topics reported on were: Business and Finance; Health and Wellness; Education and Culture; Human Rights and Geopolitics and Information and Communication Technology (ICT).
Reporting on matters discussed in the Business and Finance work group, President of the Libra Management Group (LMG) in the U.S., Stacey Mollison, said that it is disappointing to see that the African community is not improving economically as rapidly as it should.
Exclusion from opportunities, limited access to capital, poor financial literacy and limited entrepreneurship development were only a few of the challenges she listed as factors still affecting the business and financial growth of Africans.

“We need to be able to move to the next step and we have to take responsibility for where we are and really start to passionately do something about it and stop waiting for somebody else to lead us out of that state,” Mollison encouraged.
Speaking directly to the anxiety surrounding Guyana’s imminent oil-and-gas industry, Mollison was careful to point out that Guyana is in need of support, now more than ever, as many African countries have not fared well in the industry.

“We don’t have a lot of positive models about what happens to the people of African descent in those communities, so Guyana is a place where we need to focus on how we change that negative narrative around oil coming in to our community and [Africans] not really being the beneficiaries of that,” she said, adding:

“This is an opportunity for us to rally around a country that, economically it hasn’t happened yet, there’s a lot of hope around the oil-and-gas industry, [but] we need resources, support, expertise, information, legal experts, we need people around the diaspora to start pouring into this country to help us to make better decisions.”

Mollison said, too, that financial literacy is an important aspect to economic growth that remains inadequate in the black community and went on to suggest that Africans create a funding cooperative through engagement with the diaspora.

“Engage people in the diaspora to [contribute] to a wealth-building fund, where we actually get people in the diaspora to pay into a fund that we can then leverage in our respected communities or across the world; and I think Guyana is a good place to start as a model,” she said.

In addition, Mollison highlighted the need for more efforts to be made towards access to capital; entrepreneurship training and development; financial literacy and a reversal of the large un-banked African population.
Meanwhile, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of RyOne Incorporated, Ryan Stewart-Federick, listed limited access to infrastructure, poor ICT curriculums in schools and inadequate public support, as some of the factors that continue to hinder the progression of ICT in black communities.

Despite these challenges, the group’s moderator said that African communities have seen significant advancements and are capable of accomplishing even more, providing they receive the right amount of community support, community involvement, and government participation for the formulation of sustainable strategies.

Using Guyana as an example, Civil Rights Attorney-at-Law, Marcia Johnson-Blanco who moderated the Human Rights and Geopolitics working group, recommended that there be more awareness of human rights commissions functioning locally in each respective member state.

This, she said, would enable locals to engage their local organisations about the issues that affect them before the matters are presented the United Nations level for additional assistance.

Some other topics her group discussed were: the mapping of Human Rights resources; using conferences and summits to build networks; utilising UN International Days for conversations on human rights and better documentation of human rights violations in order to properly address them.

The Education and Culture group, in their discussions, addressed the effects of the formal education system on the black community, highlighting the need for countries to push politically for curriculum development that is “African-centred” through African education history.

It was emphasised, too, that before implementation, both African and non-African teachers need to be trained to be “culturally sensitive” about the materials they will transfer to children.

Other plans of action highlighted were: the rebuilding of African communities and cultures through African leadership; financial mentoring programmes; a registry for black business and programmes to teach respect for African women and girls.

Finally, redefining health from an African perspective, the Health and Wellness working group headed by Dr Ifetayo Adelaide, has decided to publish all of the principles and guidelines formulated at the summit; establish a Regional Herbal Registry and establish a taskforce to ensure the completion of these goals.