A Pan-African movement of people and organisations, working for justice, peace and dignity- Africans Rising has called for unity in the continent.
The call was made in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, during a workshop organized by Africans Rising on the need to work together, build solidarity towards changing the fate of Africans to achieve ‘‘The Africa we want”
The Co-coordinator, Africans Rising, Coumba Toure, said that having a United Africa should be the number one priority.
“We want a united Africa, each of us know that the way we are fragmented makes us weak, vulnerable and keeps us poor, not having a say really on what our lives should be. We want Africa and Africans to be respected and recognized as full human beings, we want the children of Africa to have access to quality education and food. We want our ways of being, our cultures to be not only recognized and seen but to be able to influence the rest of the world. There are things we wish to have, so our work is to clear the part, where people can find their ways to those dreams,” Toure said.
She also explained the importance of the workshop; “We come to meet as a core team to connect together as people who are working daily on Africans Rising movement, to come together to plan on what we need to do in the next year. Coming together is for planning, is for thinking first in the next year, how we’ll work, what we will do, what are our priorities in terms of what needs to be done and how and it should be done. The meeting is also about thinking further in the next two, three, five years, what will be our orientation, but to do that well, we thought it is important to learn together about the movement, how they are built, how they work, feel, what happens and what differences are between organisations and movement.”
Toure noted that; “The fact that we are together has a huge impact on the organization, because this time together has given us the opportunity to put our thoughts together, build together and reflect on what we have done before, but also what we want to do in the future.
“This is an extremely powerful moment for the movement because what we decide from the meeting will be based on the actions that we’ll take with the orientation of this movement in the next coming year.”
The Collaboration and Engagement Lead, Africans Rising, Hardi Yakubu, advocated for cross border training so as to achieve the desired goal of the Africans Rising movement.
“In 2021, what unique thing that we are going to be doing is to involve a trainer of a training programme, so that when a movement from Sierra Leonne needs training, we don’t have to bring someone from Nigeria to train them . this has a great advantage for cross border training, it also build solidarity, it will fast and more effective if someone from Sierra Leone who speaks the local language, has the same skills like the one from Nigeria, so that when a movement from Sierra Leone request for training, we don’t have to fly someone from Nigeria, but contact the person from sierra Leone to conduct the training.”
He also noted that; “Bringing movement together is one of the things we do at Africans Rising, but how do we do that? We do this through engagement and collaborations, through alliance building, bringing people and movement together. The intention is not only to present them with an opportunity reevaluate and reassess on what has been done in order to create a futuristic reflection for what comes next, but also to connect this movement who may be Ghana doing similar things as other movements who may be in Mali doing the same thing as people in Ethiopia. So how can they come together and unite their forces and make sure that through actions within the local context, they are still able to collaborate and share resources to achieve their goals faster, do their work better and create more impact.”
Africans Rising builds solidarity and cooperation within and amongst campaigns for social, economic, environmental and gender justice.
It has the mandate to expand space for civic and political action, fight for women’s rights and freedoms across society, focus on the right to equality and dignity, ensure good democratic and corruption-free governance and promote climate and environmental justice.
PIAK
