Diaspora Engagement

The crisis of African development will not ease unless ordinary Africans, wherever they are, take more responsibility for and control over their own destiny. The African Foundation for Development (AFFORD) was formed to connect Africans and their organisations abroad working for the development of Africa and her peoples directly with organisations on the continent working towards the same goals. A key concern for AFFORD is that, although very active in the development process in their own unique ways, Africans in the west are generally marginalised from development debate and activities initiated by more mainstream international non-governmental and other organisations. Rather than reinventing the wheel in tackling these issues and deciding how best to intervene, AFFORD took the view that the most useful and sensible way to proceed would be to listen to and learn from the existing African organisations—both African-led NGOs and less formal grassroots organisations—about why they were formed, what sort of activities they engaged in, what they perceived as their strengths and weaknesses, how involved they were or would like to be in development work in Africa, what sort of relationships they had with other organisations, and what their future plans were. Hence this report.

This brief concept paper makes a proposal for the opening of channels of communication between diplomatic representatives of African governments based in the UK and segments of the UK’s increasingly diverse African communities, including civil society groups, businesses, faith communities, etc. Boldly stated, the proposal is to initiate an ongoing series of informal dialogue sessions between African diplomats and the African diaspora with a view to deepening the understanding of different sides’ respective viewpoints and perspectives. The presumption is that we are bound by shared visions for Africa’s long-term, self-reliant, self-sustaining and autonomous development as a key player in an increasingly globalising world. A key aim, surely, has to be the strengthening of Africa’s institutional capacity at all levels of society. To that end, the first challenge is to overcome hurdles created by misperceptions, distrust, lack of understanding, and at best sporadic communication and exchanges.