Africa wants the world to acknowledge that through fair partnerships with other members of the global community, we ourselves are capable of unprecedented growth.
When you see in places like Africa and parts of Asia abject poverty, hungry children and malnutrition around you, and you look at yourself as being people who have well being and comforts, I think it takes a very insensitive, tough person not to feel they need to do something.
A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.
Clean water and access to food are some of the simplest things that we can take for granted each and every day. In places like Africa, these can be some of the hardest resources to attain if you live in a rural area.
The funny thing about war is that people feel you need to be morally outraged. I feel morally outraged about it, and I’ve been doing it for long enough to feel morally outraged, because I have been in massacre scenes in West Africa, and I’ve been doing this for a long time now.
Just going to Africa is amazing; it all comes back to the motherland. It’s pretty much where everything started.
I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid.
Whoever says that sanctions will only deteriorate the situations of blacks in South Africa does not know the criminal, murderous character of genocide that represents the system of apartheid.
The number one thing that kills businesses in Africa is power – or the lack of power.
My two must-haves are my cell phone and my MacBook Pro laptop, which allows me to update my Web site from wherever I am, whether I’m in Africa or in Sun Valley skiing.
To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologise unreservedly.
Coming from Morocco was just different, man. It’s a third-world country, and you are trying to make it happen. That’s all it is. I didn’t have any problem hooking up with the black kids because I’m from North Africa. And as far as Latinos, we are all the same.
Africa has been going through so much for so many years; it’s time that it stands up the way other nations are standing up.
I always felt that I had to leave a legacy on the African continent. As I was only the third player to come to the NBA from Africa, I felt I had to do my best to recruit more young Africans to come and play in the NBA – and also find a way to bring the NBA to Africa.
In Africa, listening is a guiding principle. It’s a principle that’s been lost in the constant chatter of the Western world, where no one seems to have the time or even the desire to listen to anyone else.
Sometimes I say to myself, what are you doing in this absurd job? Why don’t you go to Africa and help people? But I cannot help people, because I am a hypochondriac.
The African American’s relationship to Africa has long been ambivalent, at least since the early nineteenth century, when 3,000 black men crowded into Bishop Richard Allen’s African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia to protest noisily a plan to recolonize free blacks in Africa.
We cannot do everything in Africa, but doing nothing is not an option.
I feel that no one should be ashamed or have fear or doubt within themselves when they speak about the roots or Africa wherein I and I originate from. It’s like an individual who tries to disown himself, and to me, it is a form of defeat by disowning yourself.
They don’t have the news media set up in Africa that we do in the United States, where televisions are so accessible and newspapers and magazines are able to educate people.
So what we’re talking about here is human rights. The right to live like a human. The right to live, period. And what we’re facing in Africa is an unprecedented threat to human dignity and equality.
It gives one hope, this great strength of Africa.
There is always something new out of Africa.
When I left South Africa there were 10 million people – when I came back there were more than 40 million. I had to learn how to get to the highways because when I left where there were no highways.
I started writing an album on flights to Africa and Brazil, but it was crazy because I left the notebook on the plane. It had seven or eight songs in it. After that, I’m not writing any more songs on notebooks – and I keep my Blackberry close!
We will continue to count on your unwavering support and commitment to working with leaders of our continent in bringing about the desired renaissance of Africa.
Africa is awakening. It’s a huge market of almost a billion people with huge resources and a young population. People spend when they’re young.
Before I went to jail, I was active in politics as a member of South Africa’s leading organization – and I was generally busy from 7 A.M. until midnight. I never had time to sit and think.
I knew that there were black people in Africa, of course, unfortunately because of movies such as ‘Tarzan.’
I love Africa.
Life expectancy in many parts of Africa can be something around the age of thirty five to thirty eight. I mean you’re very fortunate if you live to that age. In fact when I went to Uganda for the first time one of the things that occurred to me was that I saw very few elderly people.
I dream of an Africa which is in peace with itself.
It is important to nurture any new ideas and initiatives which can make a difference for Africa.
I think Tunisia has a specific place in the Arab world and in Africa because it is a tiny Muslim country, but it’s very open minded. It’s the first country to start the Arab Spring, for example.
There was a time when all dark-skinned people were called Ethiopians, for the Greeks referred to Africa as, ‘The Land Of The Burnt-Face People.’
I think we should be very worried because, with technology, Boko Haram and other terrorists have become very mobile in all continents, not only in Africa but also in Europe, America, and Asia.
Africa is not for the weak-hearted: infrastructure issues are there. The middle class is absent in most of the countries. We have to cater to the low end of the market to grow.
I’ve still not written as well as I want to. I want to write so that the reader in Des Moines, Iowa, in Kowloon, China, in Cape Town, South Africa, can say, ‘You know, that’s the truth. I wasn’t there, and I wasn’t a six-foot black girl, but that’s the truth.’
Nigeria has had the misfortune – no, the fortune – of seeing the worst face of capitalism anywhere in Africa. The masses have seen it, they are disgusted, and they want an alternative.
I think we have got the wood on South Africa, but that does not mean they are not a good team. They intimidate a lot of teams but we intimidate them. There is no disrespect for South Africa; they are a very good team.
I think humanitarian organizations should acknowledge the progress more than they do. I think that one reason people are reluctant to provide more help to Africa, for example, is this sense that it’s just hopeless, in a way that I think is untrue.
I know some of my memories are made up and they are far more powerful than the things that actually happened. For example, I always remember my brother posting me a copy of ‘Dubliners’ from Africa, but he says he never did.
Africa’s agricultural sector has enormous scope for development, which would benefit both the continent’s economy and its people.
In Africa, the rangers shoot poachers.
Women account for about 70% of Africa’s food production and manage a large proportion of small enterprises. They are also increasingly represented in legislative and executive leadership positions.
Celtel established a mobile phone network in Africa at a time when investors told me that there was no market for mobile phones there.
Africa’s salvation doesn’t lie in begging and begging for more aid, and as an African, I find it very, very humiliating.
I’ve spent months living in Africa and India. So it’s not like I was sheltered when I started living in America. But my family laughed when they heard I was going to be in ‘Transformers.’ I learned a lot and got to experience Michael Bay’s mayhem. It was a very colorful experience.
My Botswana books are positive, and I’ve never really sought to deny that. They are positive. They present a very positive picture of the country. And I think that that is perfectly defensible given that there is so much written about Africa which is entirely negative.
Of course, with well-masticated food playing the role of social glue, it’s absolutely essential that everyone clear their plate. Sod the starving kiddies in Africa – it’s the overfed ones here we need to worry about.
And those Texas sunsets… I work a lot in Africa: Texas and Africa have the best sunsets on the planet, that I’ve ever seen.
The reason I’m in San Diego is not because I want distance from South Africa but because I want proximity to the people I love. But I don’t envy growing up in America. As ugly as aspects of it were, my biggest blessing was to be born a South African.
Africa is a continent that provides so much for the existence of the rest of the world. We go around the world and cultivate so many things.
