MR MASSINGA: I am Erv Massinga from the Africa Bureau of the Department of Foreign Affairs and I thank you all for joining us today. It is always a pleasure and an honor to introduce Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Today he will focus on issues that are important to him personally, to all of us: US-Africa relations and his recent trip to South Africa, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. This is his second personal visit to sub-Saharan Africa as Secretary of State.
Before I hand over the microphone to the Secretary to give some more details about my visit, I would like to say a few words to all of you here today. At the State Department, we often mention the important role you play in creating positive change in their communities and countries. We often quote the demographics of Africa by 2025, more than half of the population in Africa will be old – under 25 years old. By 2050, one out of four people on Earth will be African. These numbers remind us how important it is for young people to be engaged and ready to lead, and how important Africa is to the rest of the world and to the United States.
We have invited you all here today because the work you do embodies the ideals we all share. We wanted to hear from you as participants in the Young African Leaders Initiative, the Mandela Fellowship in Washington, or other US Government-sponsored exchanges that build professional capacity—as well as those of you in the diaspora who are deeply connected to Africa—and encourage productive and interactive exchange.
What are your priorities for our future together? What should we focus on? What can – what are we doing well? What can we do better? We need to hear those questions (unintelligible). It is my pleasure to introduce the 71st Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, who has helped shape US foreign policy for more than three decades and three presidential administrations. He served as Deputy Secretary of State under President Barack Obama from 2008 to ’17, and before that as President Obama’s Principal Deputy National Security Advisor. Mr. Secretary.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Thank you. Hey, just – Erv, thank you so much. Thank you for your daily leadership in the Office of African Affairs. I’m joined by our undersecretary for public diplomacy, Liz Allen. And look, it’s pretty simple. We just had this wonderful trip and I didn’t want it to end, so we found a way to kind of continue it – (laughter) – today. And I’m really grateful to each and every one of you for coming out.
Erv, by the way, who doesn’t look like it unless you consider that we had an elementary school program, has actually been in this business for 27 years. so –
As Erv said, we just got back from a trip. Actually, truth be told, we started on another continent. We started in Cambodia, we went to the Philippines, and then we went to South Africa, to the DRC, to Rwanda. We also made a few pit stops on the way home, a quick pit stop in Ghana to refuel, but we did manage to see the president in the airport lounge. Very good. Even hit Cabo Verde; that was our last stop. And then finally, finally coming home.
But this is an ongoing story, which is really why I wanted to have the opportunity to be here with all of you today. The trip, my second to sub-Saharan Africa—and in a way the third, because the very—I think the second trip I did as secretary was actually a virtual trip to Kenya and Nigeria very early on when we weren’t actually traveling. So we had extensive engagements, and I’ll come back to that later. We will have a summit of African leaders hosted by President Biden at the end of the year. So there’s a lot of work leading up to it and accelerating it.
But I think, as Erv suggested, that this is proof that for us sub-Saharan Africa is a great force for the future. And precisely the numbers that Erv mentioned go to the heart of this, the fact that, as he said, in the next few years, almost half of the population will be younger than 25, and by 2050, one out of four people on this planet will be from Africa. This is the definition of the future, and we have a big part in trying to fix that common future.
One of the opportunities I had during the trip was to outline our strategy for sub-Saharan Africa, and we tried to focus on a simple proposition. For us now, it is not about what we do for Africa; that is what we are doing with Africa. And it comes down to – I mean simple, strong recognition. There isn’t a single problem that really has an impact on the lives of our people and Africans – whether it’s the COVID we’re all fighting and the global health spread, whether it’s climate change, whether it’s the impact of new technology on all our lives – none of these issues can be effectively solved by ourselves. We have to find ways to cooperate, find ways to coordinate. We need to find ways to do more with other countries.
And precisely because Africa represents a large part of the future as well as the present, it is in our interest to find ways to deepen our cooperation. The partnership we seek extends far beyond government. It goes to civil society and non-governmental organizations; goes to the private sector; refers to citizens more broadly. And on the trip we had the opportunity to connect with so many different groups, and that’s part of the reason I was so eager to actually extend the trip by talking to all of you.
And really, these partnerships will really be driven by whether you end up in government, whether you’re in civil society, whether you’re in business, whether you’re in academia, whatever it is—the arts—you’re at the center of the kind of partnership which we hope to build.
In particular, we have, as Erv said, people from the diaspora here and the Mandela Fellowship, which is something I’m very excited about. You, as a result, are already actually building the partnerships that we are trying to build.
Let me just say a few words about the extraordinary strength of the scholarship program. Since President Obama launched the scholarship program, more than 5,800 rising leaders from sub-Saharan Africa have actually participated. That is remarkable in just a few short years. But what’s even more remarkable – because I’ve had the opportunity to talk to a number of you over the years, including recently on this trip – is that I think the Mandela Fellowship does several very powerful things. One is that it actually allows you to create networks that will last long after your fellowship and, I think, will change power far into the future.
I met some students in South Africa on a recent trip. The fellows are tackling issues like getting more girls into STEM, just to name one example. But what is fundamental to communion is that it goes both ways. Ideas, innovations flow in both directions. This applies to the colleagues who are here among you today. You actually manage to enrich our colleges, universities, even while you are studying there. So the American students over there got just as much, if not more than this, I would say, than you did.
And this also applies to members of the diaspora who are with us today. You do work that connects our countries, our cultures, our communities, the arts, public health, education, human rights, democracy – it’s all what you do.
The last thing I wanted to share is this because I can’t wait to hear from you and talk. One of the things that I hear sometimes when I meet with young people is: how can the U.S. talk about the importance of democracy—which is one of the things we talked about in the strategy—when you’re facing your challenges here at home in the United States when it comes to democracy, the challenges that I think are visible every day? And actually, that’s part of the answer. The very fact that they are visible, that you see us struggling with them every day, that it is not pushed under the carpet, that these problems do not exist, we face them openly, transparently – that is, in fact, part of the answer. Because as long as you can do that, I think you’ll come out on the right side of things.
But the main point of our strategy is this: it does not treat democracy as a problem for which Africa has problems and the United States has solutions. On the contrary, it recognizes that we all have challenges in strengthening our democracies, ensuring their resilience, and that’s everything from misinformation to inequality. And we really care about learning from each other.
One of the things I’ve discovered in my nearly 30 years of dealing with foreign policy and traveling the world in one way or another—first with President Clinton, then with President Obama, and now with President Biden—is that just about everything we’re trying to figure out, someone somewhere probably has . And if we just find ways to share that information so that we don’t have to keep reinventing the wheel, we’ll make progress much faster than people can imagine.
We have to rely on the best ideas, we have to rely on the best innovations no matter where they come from. And that’s the spirit of the Democracy Summit that we initiated last year — President Biden did — and that’s the spirit that will animate the African Leaders Summit at the end of the year. And that summit will have a great role for young people, young generations and a great role for the diaspora.
So stay tuned. Much more to come in the next few months.
The last point is this. This trip re-emphasized to me that many of the issues we now consider global priorities and discussed – including, for example, the interconnectedness of our health and our climate – are actually first in Africa being championed by African citizens and nations. In South Africa and beyond, we have heard how our civil rights movements have inspired and encouraged each other over the generations, and we see it today.
Let me close with this: two requests. First, the application for the 2023 Mandela Washington Fellowship opens tomorrow. So help us in recruiting. If you had a good experience, if this is something that worked for you, please spread the word. Share. We want to attract the best of the young generation to participate.
Second, I have made it a priority from day one to try to hire and retain a State Department workforce that truly reflects the country we represent. So if any of you Americans here are interested in a career in foreign policy, foreign service, civil service, come. We need you; we want you This is the time – it is the most exciting time, as challenging as it is to engage in diplomacy, precisely for the reason I stated at the beginning. None of the problems that really matter can be tackled by one country alone. The role of our diplomacy, the role of our diplomats, is to build this cooperation, this coordination between countries. There’s never been a more important time to do so, so come along.
Let me stop talking about it, because I really can’t wait to hear (inaudible). (Applause.)
What was one effect of the African diaspora?
The African diaspora has a global influence. Music, food, art, sports, architecture, science, business, agriculture are just some of the industries where the influence and impact of Africa and the African diaspora can be seen.
What are the reasons for the African diaspora? The creation of the modern African diaspora in America is largely the result of a tumultuous period in world history in which Africans were dispersed abroad under the pressure of plantation slavery and ideologies associated with white supremacy. This may interest you : Massachusetts public health officials confirm 18 new cases of monkeypox.
What is the African diaspora How did it affect the world quizlet?
The African diaspora was the spread of people of African descent across the Americas and Western Europe. He influenced the world by spreading African culture.
How did African diaspora affect Africa?
The economic impact on the African continent has proven devastating, as generations of young people have been taken from their communities and societies disrupted. See the article : Middle Tennesseans pack food boxes to help Kentucky flood victims. Some communities formed by descendants of African slaves in America, Europe and Asia have survived to this day.
Why is African diaspora important?
The African diaspora has contributed in important ways to the economic development of many countries, as well as social, cultural and political innovations of global importance. This may interest you : Needs a village to build a business Catherine Porth.
What is the most important aspect of the African diaspora?
What are some positives of African diaspora?
The African diaspora population has shown significant interest in capacity building and skills transfer partnerships with their home countries. Despite the diaspora’s desire to contribute to their countries of origin, there are significant obstacles that threaten the realization of these interests.
How did the African diaspora affect Africa?
The economic impact on the African continent has proven devastating, as generations of young people have been taken from their communities and societies disrupted. Some communities formed by descendants of African slaves in America, Europe and Asia have survived to this day.
Which American city has the most black population?
New York had the largest number of people who identified as black at about 2.3 million, followed by Chicago at 1.1 million, and Detroit, Philadelphia and Houston, which had between 500,000 and 1 million each.
Where do the black elite live? Today, the African American upper class exists throughout the United States, particularly in the Northeast and South, with the largest neighborhoods of majority-black high-income neighborhoods in the Washington, DC metropolitan area, particularly in Prince George’s County and Charles County.
What is the blackest city?
In 2020, the largest cities that had a black majority were Detroit, Michigan (639 thousand inhabitants), Memphis, Tennessee (633 thousand inhabitants), Baltimore, Maryland (534 thousand inhabitants), New Orleans, Louisiana (384 thousand inhabitants) and Cleveland , Ohio (population 373K).
What city has the most successful black population?
Atlanta, like several southern cities on the list, has become a primary landing spot for people of color seeking careers…
- San Antonio, Texas (tie) …
- Houston (tie) …
- Charlotte, North Carolina, South Carolina. …
- Baltimore. …
- Austin, Texas. …
- Washington, D.C.-VA-MD-WV (tie) …
- Atlanta (tie)
