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Dec 18th, 2008 - 14:35:59 |
ESIAM THEOPHILUS
We wish to first of all salute the many actively young people of NGYF on the Africa continent. It is the Executive pressure to announce their interim meeting in Ghana on the 20th December 2008.
Agender of the meeting :
(a) Sustaining Aid for the development and setting priorities for the forum.
(b) Economic issues
Dec 18th, 2008 - 14:34:51 |
ESIAM THEOPHILUS
We wish to first of all salute the many actively young people of NGYF on the Africa continent. It is the Executive pressure to announce their interim meeting in Ghana on the 20th December 2008.
Agender of the meeting :
(a) Sustaining Aid for the development and setting priorities for the forum.
(b) Economic issues
Mar 7th, 2006 - 14:43:26 |
ESIAM THEOPHILUS
Dear colleagues,
It gives me much pleasure to inform you that the first edition of N-G online magazine a pet project in collaboration with prince lans fans club will come online on 6th May , 2006..N-G online magazine is a monthly publication that would feature the followings:
Editorial issues
Articles
Youth/organisation profiles
Letters
E-connect and Events
Special interviews with eminent personalities in the world.
This magazine is aimed at promoting intercultural and interpersonal relationship among the youths in the world.Besides, to eduacte youths, connect them, promoting creativities and promoting youth self reliance, etc.
Yo are hereby urged to subscribe to this new concept. Every subscriber will be receiving a free copy of this magazine every first Sat. of the month.
To subscibe , pls do contact rpf_project@yahoo.com just post your name and email address .You can also apply as one of our contributors/columnists
Thanks
Sep 13th, 2005 - 17:22:49 |
ESIAM THEOPHILUS
REPORT ON JUST ENDED NYGF 2005 (GHANA - AKOSOMBO)
We are happy to share our first reactions after the Nigeria – Ghana Youth Festival 2005 event - which for five days (23 – 27 August 2005) have gathered around 58 direct and international participants from Nigeria, Gambia, Benin and Ghana and numerous NGOs, District Assembly, Representative from Member of Parliament as well as Tertiary students and school teachers,
I would like to extend my gratitude for your support, participation or interest in participating.
Representatives from Ghana, Benin, Nigeria, Gambia also presented a report on the achievement of their home countries organization. Generally speaking on how they can come inline to project the image of NGYF.
For instance the Gambia delegation focus on how the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR FOOD SECURITY is highly motivated and committed youth structure with the aim of mobilizing productive youth labor for sustainable food security and again to appoint two delegate from Ghana NGYF to represent the country in the STEERING COMMITTEE in Gambia. To conclude, the representative drew attention to the need for developed countries to assist developing countries like Gambia, Niger as a case of reference to fight tropical hunger by alternative means.
Examples from Nigerians stressed the dangers of the unemployed youth, the high rate of violence through occultist art and inform participants on how money should work for them and they not working for money. They again point the system of savings since any aid agencies wants to see work in progress before assisting.
Further, case studies from Benin show how some young activist have made it through the practice of volunteerism and networking, and role of some social responsibilities from some agencies.
From Ghana, Mrs. Vera Boohene, Reporting and Information Assistance of World Food Programme, The Food Aid Organization of The United Nations System, urged participate to fight against hunger in particular with the aim of raising funds to assist more children through the WFP Global School Feeding Campaign
We intend to follow up this through campaigns, grassroots work and
lobbying coordinated by the International Networks. The main goal is to share common resources and exchange ideas, in addition to all the network partners take action in the local campaigns (petitions, appeals to governments, local authorities, church leaders youth leaders..) which each national branch is in charge of as a part of the follow-up.
Depending on the appropriate funding, the forum will be capable to conduct case studies and launch campaigns urging governments and individual to take action and raising public awareness on agriculture and development issues.
Our greatest thanks go to
UN - World Food Program [WFP, Ghana and Nigeria],
Asuogyaman District Assembly, Ghana
Member of Parliament for Asuogyaman/ Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, Ghana
Youth Alliance Action For Liberation – NIGERIA
Royal People Foundation – NIGERIA
Multi Multivational Foundation – GHANA
Global Youth Action Network – GHANA
Journal des Etudiants – BENIN
Junior Chamber International – NIGERIA
National Youth Association For Food Security – GAMBIA
Young Peace Brigade International – GHANA
Africa Humanist Alliance – GHANA
Student World Assembly – GHANA
Awareness Creation – GHANA
RAFT – GHANA
All Media.
For pictures and report, please go to: http://projects.takingitglobal.org/NGYF
The fight has just started...
All your suggestions are welcome.
Read you soon
Best Regards
'If poverty and hunger stand up, it is because we sit, so let's get up'
Mr. ESIAM THEOPHILUS
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
NIGERIA – GHANA YOUTH FORUM
Box: 48, AKRADE, E/R. GHANA
Phone: +233244586726 / +233208278920
Email: nigghayouthfest@yahoo.com
mrbingogo@yahoo.com
Website: http://projects.takingitglobal.org/NGYF
Sep 13th, 2005 - 17:20:41 |
ESIAM THEOPHILUS
VIOLENCE IN AFRICA
There are new types of violence in Africa to which we have to find adequate ways of responding. But from historical perspective, political independence in Africa was achieved through violence in response to colonialism and imperialism.
INDEPENDENCE STRUGGLES AND THE COLD WAR
Dating back to the time of the Mau war in Kenya and the Algerian liberation struggles in the 1950s; liberation movements fought for and first achieved independence in the 1960s. Subsequent struggles against Portuguese colonialism in Guinea Bissau, Angola and Mozambique in the mid – 1970s and finally in southern Africa, Namibia and South Africa closed the independence process. This violence was legitimised by the need to overthrow colonial domination in Africa. The cold war produced a different kind of violence. For instance, it was superpower rivery that led to civil war in Angola and Mozambique. By and large, RENAMO was a creation of western powers, with the support of apartheid South Africa, to fight the Marxist FRELIMO government in Mozambique. Similarly in Angola, south Africa and the western powers, especially the USA, not only armed UNITA, but even envisaged a way to deal with the Marxist MPLA regime that they did not really want in Angola
SELF - FINACING CIVIL WARS
But after the cold war, the USA and several European countries that had supported UNITA and RENAMO decided that this was no longer tenable. So having been built into a huge military force, INITA in particular had to turn to mining diamonds to finance the war. At this point, we see the introduction into Africa of self - financing civil wars, a new kind of violence. Though a legacy of the cold war, the on going civil war in Angola is no longer ideologically driven but a struggle for the control of mineral resources.
Fortunately, the international community is beginning to acknowledge that diamonds are being used to finance civil wars in Africa. The USA and Britain have criticized the presidents of Liberia and Burkina Faso, Charles Taylor and Blaise Compaore respectively, for helping Sierra Leone rebels to continue fighting a brutal civil war.
This trend is being repeated in several other countries in central and western Africa where ongoing civil wars are being fought not on ideological grounds but over who controls economic wealth. I see this as a very dangerous development because people elsewhere in Africa may also start using any excuse to form a ‘liberation movement” carve out areas where gold, diamonds and minerals are found, and claim they in a legitimate struggle. This has happened in Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The legitimacy of any of these groups’ claims to be liberation movements needs to be questioned.
NEXT GENERATION OF POLITICAL LEADERSHIP
Another type of violence has some with competition for the second generation of political leadership in Africa. For example, in response to the despotism of Idi Amin and Milton Obote, Uganda’s introduced a new style of liberation movements in the early 1980s. Uganda in exile, joined by other Africans who also saw the need to struggle against deposits in their own country, organized themselves to acquire military training.
That was how the Uganda/Rwanda connection started. The Uganda National Resistance Movement (NRM invited Rwandese refugees, most of whom were Tutsis, to join hands with them. Once Yuweri Museveni took power in 1986 he in turn helped the Tutsi-led Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF to take over Kigali in1994. This methodology was repeated in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Several factions lead by Congolese in exile had been organizing for along time so that in 1996, with the support of Uganda and Rwanda, they were able to take over Kinshasa and put Laurent Kabila in power.
A similar trend is unfolding in West Africa. The Sierra Leone Revolutionary United Front (RUF under the leadership of Foday Sankoh fourth along side Charles Taylor in Liberia, thus gaining military experience and organisational skills. Once Taylor came to power in Monrovia, he helped Sankoh to take over Freetown, replacing the democratically elected president Kabbah. Today Sierra Leonean civil war rages on, financed by diamonds mined in the rebel-controlled areas of the country.
CHILDREN AND CIVILIANS THE MAIN VICTIMS
When Kampala fell in 1986, the troops who spearheaded the takeover were mainly young boys. That was the first time we heard of child soldiers in Africa. Now it has become a pattern, with same thing happening in Sierra Leone. Another very disturbing characteristics of contemporary civil wars in Africa is the violence against civilian communities. Olara Otunnu, the UN under- secretary for children and armed conflict, calls the killing of innocent civilians, particularly women, children and old people, the “abomination”. This was unheard of in African traditions: you could never claim to be a warrior if you were killing women and children! It is a really new and very un-Africa phenomenon. Most of those who are dying in today’s civil wars in Africa as civilians in not soldiers. This is a tragic indictment of Africa political leaders who think little of their peoples’ lives . In the past two years, civil wars as cause the death of more than 17million people in eastern Congo alone. These were unnecessary deaths. In “non-war conditions”, the average death rates in this five-province areas of 18million people would be 600,000. The actual number of death was 2.3million. Of the 1.7 million additional deaths reported in the survey,200,000 were caused by acts of violence, with the rest attributed to the war-related collapse of health services and food supplies.
It is not for anything that the present civil war in Congo has been referred to as Africa’s first world war. It involves about one dozen other African countries. What is worse is that resources that should be used for the benefit of the people are being used to acquire the weapons used to kill them.
PRIVATE ARMIES, GANG VIOLENCE
A dangerous offshoot of the violence is the evolution of private armies-another a new phenomenon in Africa-as distinct from either liberation movements or natarmies. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, for instance, there are now no less that five factions, each of which has developed its own “army” individual power mongers are also said to be taking advantage of the situation in the DRC to develop private armies. These will obviously be used in future as bargaining chips in bids for control of the state. Another type of violence that deserves attention are young people’s response to societies that offer then no hope. In Kenya and South Africa among others, gangs of young people who dropped out of school because of poverty are “finding new ways to share the wealth of the society”. They are mainly involved in “car –jacking in broad daylight. They stop anybody. These gangs are well armed because small arms are readily available anywhere . The interesting thing is that gang members talk very openly. When they stop someone , they explain the reasons for their acts.
They say that society is organized in such a way that it forces them to drop out of school and therefore to lose hope. They say, “we cannot just sit back and wait for you people, with your good jobs and your good income to share with us, Since you don’t share with us willingly, we’re going to force you to share with us. They are saying that they are not criminal by nature, but that society has forced them to behave like criminals.
OTHER FORMS VIOLENCE
Harsh economic conditions created by the debt, debt serving, IMF and World Bank Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs), and the withdrawal of state subsidies for health account for millions of additional deaths even in countries where peace prevails. Research should be done to establish the levels of debt and SAP related deaths.
And finally, in the post – cold war democratization process violence has been precipitated by the politization of ethnicity. Afraid to face free and fair elections, incumbents have promoted political motivated ethnic clashes. For example, in the run up to Kenya’s 1992 general elections when multiparty became inevitable , ethnic groups which for years lived peacefully alongside each other suddenly began to fight.
There is a lot talk about conflict resolution by groups inside and outside Africa but this type of social intervention has minimal impart. Dealing with all the different emerging facets violence in Africa requires a deeper understanding of the problems than hurriedly – formed NGOs are capable of.
AFRICA’S TWO FACES
The media have projected an image of Africa as a continent in despair, a continent of famine, disease and tribal warfare. But the media hardly touch the way Africans look at life. Africa’s life centred ethnic, communities in Africa in which the art of living and even of dying are well understood – the positive side of Africa.
During the WCC assembly in Harare in 19 98, it was said Africa had embarked on a journey to hope. There is still a lot of hope. But this article attempts to call attention to a new and dangerous really. I think we are have a class of Africa’s with an immense thirst for power and who are largely responsible for new forms of violence.
With so much hardship to contend with, you wonder how ordinary Africans can survive at all. Africa is largely excluded from global trade because of globalization, and the nation state is extremely weak. But the people are surviving. One strength is our institutions of affection, such as the family and our community which represent a positive and good side of Africa. The other is the resilience of our spirit that helps to hold together the soul of Africa.
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