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'A poor man's African Davos'
06/05/2008 10:38 - (SA)
New York - More than 1 000 prominent African-Americans and top executives of US companies will head to Tanzania in early June for a summit meeting with African political and business leaders.
The aim is to promote ties organisers hope could help lift the world's poorest continent.
Andrew Young, the former US ambassador to the United Nations and mayor of Atlanta who is co-chairperson of the summit, said it will focus on topics ranging from climate change and energy needs to jobs for young people, improving health care and coping with rising food prices.
"This is kind of a poor man's African Davos," Young said, referring to the annual meeting in the Swiss mountain resort of the world's leading figures in business, politics and the humanities.
"It's a potpourri of ideas and projects and our efforts to respond to the needs of Africa."
The summits began in 1991 and were the brainchild of The Rev Leon H Sullivan, a civil rights crusader whose call for companies doing business in South Africa to give opportunities to their black workers helped end apartheid. Just before he died in 2001, he asked Young and his business partner, Carl Masters, to help his family keep the summits going.
The June 2-5 meeting will be the eighth Leon H Sullivan summit, and will convene in the Tanzanian city of Arusha, with its panoramic view of Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest peak at 5 895m. Organisers said on Monday that US participants will include civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, comedian Chris Tucker, and National Basketball Association player Kelenna Azubuike of the Golden State Warriors.
'The Summit of a Lifetime'
The last summit in Abuja, Nigeria, in 2006 attracted 27 African presidents, former US President Bill Clinton, and executives from major multinational corporations.
Young said in a recent interview he expects at least 27 African leaders at next month's summit as well as executives from the Coca-Cola Co, General Electric, Chevron Corp, Procter and Gamble, and "a pretty good representation from the banking community". A South Korean delegation that has developed a new technology for digging wells is also coming, he said.
Tanzania's UN Ambassador Augustine Mahiga said President Jakaya Kikwete, who currently chairs the African Union, has invited leaders of all 53 AU member states to the summit.
"There will definitely be a great and record turnout for this event," he said. "Tanzania has billed this one as 'The Summit of a Lifetime' because it's going to be a combination of the political, the cultural and the tourist part of it - and every member of the team will be invited to climb Mount Kilimanjaro."
The summit follows "the tradition of promoting pan-Africanism between the African people in the African continent and people of African descent in the new world", he said, noting that the African Union has recognised the importance of the African diaspora by designating it as a "sub-region" of the continent.
"The Sullivan process is like a bridge over the Atlantic, connecting Africa and the Americas - a multi-purpose bridge ... (to) serve political, technical and economic ends," Mahiga said.
"It is time to address the problems of poverty, ignorance and diseases with the help of the Americans - African-Americans who left the continent in disarray, in chaos, as slaves - and it is a time to rekindle the roots and the bones of a common origin and a new era of solidarity," Mahiga said.
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