Good afternoon, everyone.
My name is Joel Hellman.
I'm the dean of the School of Foreign Service.
I'm very pleased
to welcome you here today
for the Maloy Distinguished Lecture
on Global Health.
Let me just say a few words.
I'm not going to introduce
our distinguished lecturer today.
Dr. Emily Mendenhall has the privilege to do that.
But I do wanna just start off a bit
with the perspective of the School of Foreign Service,
and then a warm thank you to the Maloy family
for giving us the opportunity to have this discussion.
Let me start off first why I'm so excited
that we have this lecture series
available to us.
It started in 2000, when Paul and Catherine Maloy
endowed The Maloy Family Fund, which would
help us support health-related projects
in our Science, Technology,
and International Affairs Program.
This was an important boost to our efforts
to engage issues of global health,
integrate issues of global health
into the traditional areas of security,
diplomacy and international affairs,
which have been an important, and always been,
an important part of what the
School of Foreign Service stands for.
When we think about global health,
it is a remarkable arena that straddles
so many of the things that have been so important
to the School of Foreign Service for so long.
It transcends nations.
It requires cooperation and engagement
across nations.
It has an element of defining international affairs
and diplomacy.
It brings issues of economics, of science,
of political science, of international relations.
It sits at the intersection of so many things
that we do.
As a result, I'm so pleased that we've had
the opportunity
each year to bring in someone who really
represents the truly multidisciplinary nature
of thinking about and solving issues
in global health, and bringing all
of the strengths of the School of Foreign Service
and the ideas that motivate
the School of Foreign Service
into one critical issue area.
Let me thank very much Paul and Catherine Maloy.
Paul is here with his family.
His grandchildren are here.
His son-in-law is here.
I am so thrilled that we're starting early
and getting you engaged in these
critical issues.
Thank you so much for your support.
I'm particularly pleased to be welcoming
this lecture today on megacities
and biosecurity threats in Africa because,
again, thinking about global health
as the intersection of issues that
we're so concerned about in the
School of Foreign Service,
I cannot think of an issue area that is so relevant.
You have the dynamics of urbanization,
which is, I think, one of the critical
and fundamental and defining features
of the last sort of 50 years.
Myself, who's lived in Africa, one sees it,
feels it every day, the remarkable pull
of megacities and how that's changing
the landscape of Africa.
Biosecurity and understanding biosecurity risks
is remaking the way we think about security,
and is critical to the way in which we
redefine security threats
in the next century.
It is critical to the kinda traditional
interests and area.
Bringing global health, biosecurity,
urbanization in Africa, it's just this
incredible intersection of the kinds of things
that we are so passionate about here
at the School of Foreign Service
and at Georgetown University, and why
I'm so thrilled that Dr. Akin Abayomi
is here to discuss these issues.
Let me welcome you.
Let me thank you for being part of this series.
Let me thank you for working in this area
and being interested and engaged in this area.
Let me thank the Maloy family for their support
and engagement with us to ensure that we
are working at the intersection of these
critical areas.
Let me, with you, look forward
to what I'm sure will be a fascinating lecture
on this important topic.
Thank you very much.
Look forward to hearing from Dr. Akin Abayomi.
(audience applauds)
- Thank you very much, Dean Hillman.
It is always a pleasure to welcome
all of you to Georgetown and especially
to the Maloy Distinguished Lecture.
It's something I look forward to every year
as we engage with some of the leading scholars
on some of the most critical global health issues.
The Maloy Distinguished Lecture is a special evening
hosted nearly every year for the past 15 years,
although the first was in 2000,
by the Science, Technology,
and International Affairs Program,
or the STIA Program, in the Edmund A. Walsh
School of Foreign Service.
It's truly a pleasure to welcome Dr. Akin Abayomi
this year to be our, to deliver our
distinguished lecture.
Dr. Abayomi joins an impressive list
of Maloy Distinguished Lectures, which we
have listed on the back of the program for you.
Last year, we hosted Dr. Helene Gayle,
a leader in global health development.
Two years ago, we hosted Dr. Vikram Patel,
a true visionary who has transformed the movement
for global mental health.
The year before, we hosted editor-in-chief
of the medical journal The Lancet,
Sir Richard Horton.
These enriching lectures have been made possible
by the generosity and the vision
of Paul and Catherine Maloy.
In 1999, Paul and Catherine Maloy endowed
the Maloy Family Fund to support
health-related projects in the STIA Program.
This was around the time that the STIA Program
itself was founded.
These initiatives focus on international health issues,
benefiting students from both the
School of Foreign Service and the
School of Nursing and Health Studies.
Paul J. Maloy is a 1968 graduate
of the School of Foreign Service,
and Catherine Fowler Maloy is a 1968 graduate
of the School of Nursing and Health Studies.
Both have been active in Georgetown alumni relations
for many years.
We are so grateful for your continual engagement.
Dr. Akin Abayomi was born in Lagos,
and schooled at King's College, Loyola College
and the International School, University of Ibadan.
Akin studied at the Royal Medical College
of St. Bartholomew's Hospital and the
University of London, where he attained
his first graduate degree in medicine.
Akin is a specialist in internal medicine,
hematology and oncology, obtaining fellowships
from both Royal College of Medicine
in the United Kingdom and the College of Medicine
in South Africa.
Akin has worked in several countries
around the world in both internal medicine,
hematology and transplant medicine,
and has been exposed to a variety
of geographical variations of disease patterns
within these disciplines.
Dr. Abayomi also trained in ecosystem integrity
and wilderness management, and has a special interest
in environmental health and climate change,
and its impact on human health.
He uses the term syndemics, which is very
exciting to me.
Dr. Abayomi manages a bio habitat conservation project
in his spare time, which doesn't seem
to be much. (laughs)
He is emeritus in the Department of Pathology,
faculty of medicine in health sciences
at the University of Stellenbosch in Cape Town,
consultant to the University of the West Indies
on biosecurity, principal investigator
of the Global Emerging Pathogens Treatment Consortium,
or GET, which was established
at the height of the Ebola outbreak.
The mission of GET is to establish
an African-based public health advocacy
and biosecurity response mechanism
to the threat of emerging infectious diseases in Africa.
Dr. Abayomi is also a member of the
H3Africa and B3Africa consortia
in promoting the concept of precision medicine
for Africa.
It's my great honor to welcome you to Georgetown.
We're very much looking forward to your lecture today.
Thank you.
(audience applauds)
- Good afternoon, or good evening.
It depends on your time clock.
I just flew in from Ghana this morning,
so my time clock is
advanced. (laughs)
But it was a fairly good flight,
and I was received very well here.
Thank you very much to the
presence of the Maloy family and the opportunity
to give this lecture.
And to my distinguished colleagues,
thank you very much for that
very
outlined introduction.
When I was asked to give this talk,
I could have pitched it in
many guises.
But what influenced me the most was the name
of the faculty, or the School of Foreign Services.
I thought I should do a talk
that reflects international diplomacy
and the relationship between continents,
global powers and Africa.
I developed this talk to
try to understand,
try and give you an understanding
what our perspective is in Africa,
in terms of security, of global health security.
We're very concerned on the continent
because many things are happening.
We are almost at the position where
we can't find solutions to the myriad
of problems that we're experiencing.
It then begs,
why are we experiencing so many problems
and why are we not able to cope
with the problems that we're facing?
It requires a root cause analysis, in my opinion.
This could be an uncomfortable lecture,
but I believe that I have academic license
because I am in one of the most liberal
institutions in America.
I would beg that you don't take offense
at some of the things I'm gonna say.
Many of the things I'm gonna say
are historical, and many of them
have had significant impact on the continent
of Africa, for which we're still struggling
and trying to find a way to rise above.
As a brief introduction, these are some
of my affiliations.
The GET Consortium,
the University of the West Indies,
the National Institute for Medical Research
in Nigeria, H3Africa, B3Africa.
I was born in Lagos.
This is a nice picture of Lagos.
Much of Lagos is not so nice,
but where that arrow is is the
Island Maternity Hospital where I was born
some decades ago.
I did my medical first degree in
St. Bartholomew's Hospital, which is famous
for being the oldest hospital in the world,
established in the 11th century
by King Henry VIII.
I did quite a bit of time in the
University of the West Indies.
I'm very pleased to have here at this talk
the current principal of the Cave Hill Campus
of the University of the West Indies,
which is where I spent 12 years.
In this picture, that's Professor Eudine Barriteau.
In this picture, she's talk.
Is it possible to have these stage lights off?
In this picture, she's talking
to Sir George Alleyne, who I believe has
been one of your previous
distinguished lecturers in 2003.
I spent 10 years in the University of Stellenbosch
in Cape Town.
That was a teaching hospital that I worked in.
It's one of the largest teaching hospitals in Africa.
It's called the Tygerberg Hospital,
which is multidisciplinary,
serving about six to 10 million population catchment.
We established a
Global Emerging Pathogens Treatment Consortium
in 2014, at the height of the Ebola outbreak.
Thank you.
I'm starting to move my base from South Africa
back to West Africa, and I'm beginning to develop
a relationship with the
Nigerian Institute of Medical Research,
where I will be based in the near future.
What is the scope of this talk?
I thought I should try and establish
the linkages between centuries of global
foreign policies towards Africa
and the current-day biosecurity risks
that we are seeing.
Why is Africa so prone to biosecurity threats?
Africa is a unique setting with profound
historical perspectives.
Africa's growth was stunted.
Why?
Why Ebola emerged in West Africa,
as opposed to where it's traditionally
supposed to emerge?
Why was it so badly managed?
What is the biosecurity significance
of exploding populations?
What is the link between failed states
and bio-insecurity?
What interventions are necessary
and what must happen?
What is the nature of reparative justice,
the role of the global community,
and what is our role as Africans?
What is the role of academia on civil society?
Have we, or will we, run out of time?
I'll try and touch on these things.
I appreciate that we have a vast
diversity in the audience.
I'm trying not to make this talk
too medical or too scientific, and to touch on
a variety of topics, which I believe
may trigger
some discussion.
We know in biosecurity that all actions
have immediate and long-term consequences.
What goes around, comes around.
I believe the law of karma always applies.
It's not divine retribution.
It's simply reaping what you sow.
The question is, is Africa's underdevelopment
rooted in slavery, colonialism
and neocolonialism?
Was that the reason, or one of the reasons,
why Ebola devastated West Africa
and the continent?
Let's try and examine some of these issues.
I'm gonna be talking about three countries, really.
I'll talk about Sierra Leone in this talk.
I'll be talking about Nigeria
and, to some extent, I'll be talking about
the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Ebola almost broke the back, was the straw
that almost broke the back of West Africa.
It was a harrowing timeframe for us,
between 2013 and the end of 2015.
At one point in time, we were wondering,
according to the models, this thing
was going to escalate completely out of control,
and we just didn't have the infrastructure
or the capacity to manage it.
Now, David Suzuki, a famous environmentologist,
I love this quote that he captures here.
He says, "There are some thing in the world
"that we can't change.
"We can't change gravity, the speed of light,
"our biological nature that requires clean air,
"clean water, clean soil, clean energy
"and the biodiversity that we were born into,
"that we so depend on for our health
"and our well-being.
"Protecting the biosphere should be our
"highest priority, or else we sicken and we die.
"Other things, like capitalism and free enterprise,
"the economy, currency, the markets,
"are not forces of nature.
"We invented them.
"They are not immutable, and we can change them.
"It makes no sense to elevate economics
"above the biosphere."
There's a right way, and there's a wrong way.
I don't know if any of you have read
this book, The Collapse.
It was written by Jared Diamond some years ago.
This is the second of two books he wrote.
He talks about how societies choose to fail
or succeed.
In a nutshell, he said global empires
or global powers have failed
because they've ignored certain things.
The things that he point out are typically
environmental issues.
He's gone through his history
to try and pick out issues that he felt
have contributed to the collapse of major empires.
Deforestation and habitat destruction,
climate change, the buildup of toxins
in our environments, water and energy scarcity,
full use to the max of the resources of Earth.
But he also points out
that apart from
ignoring or mitigating or adapting
to environmental issues,
some of the reasons why great powers collapse
is because of their hostility towards
other countries or the collapse
of trading partners.
Now, I lived in Cape Town for 10 years.
As part of my job, it was to advise
the government on the impending calamities
of climate change.
We warned the government of South Africa
that certain parts of South Africa were moving
into a climate stress,
and sooner or later, we're gonna reach a tipping point
where we're gonna run out of water.
That is happening as we speak.
We're now counting down to what's called Day Zero
in Cape Town, which is the western cape
of South Africa.
It is estimated that on the 20th of May
of this year, in about two months' time,
the taps will run dry.
In other words, there won't be a drop of water
provided by the municipal government
to the people of Cape Town.
Six to 12 million people will have no access
to water.
We talk about water scarcity, we talk about water conflict.
This is real.
In my opinion, the simple definition
of biosecurity or global health security
means good custodianship and maintenance
of the integrity of our biosphere,
and what we do in it.
Human behavior towards the ecosphere
has become dysfunctional,
and now, arguably, threatens our own survival.
The modern world is dangerously deluded
when it thinks that it can expand
its attributes unlimited
and human enterprise can decouple itself
from the environment.
This phenomemon is obvious all over the world,
but it's poignant in Africa because Africa
is feeling the heat of global warming,
excuse the pun.
We're finding it difficult to adapt.
It's not our job to mitigate.
There's a difference between adaptation
and mitigation.
Mitigation is you stop producing greenhouse gases.
Adaptation means you learn how to live
under the new circumstances of a deranged environment.
It's not our job to mitigate because
we didn't produce those gases in the first place.
Those gases were produced by the
Industrial Revolution, of which we did not participate.
Yes, we provided the raw materials,
but we didn't participate in the Industrial Revolution.
The setting is Africa.
Demography is exploding.
We're about to go into our industrial growth,
but we don't have the luxury of the
free labor and the cheap energy
that the Industrial Revolutionary countries had
to grow their economies.
Now, the first time I saw this slide,
I thought it couldn't be possible,
that in the next 50 years, Africa's population
will expand four times,
from about 1 billion to 4.2 billion.
I thought this is just an impossibility,
but that's the modeling.
In about 40 to 50 years, 40% of the people
on Earth will be Africans.
Now, when you examine that,
space is not actually the issue because
most of Africa is underdeveloped.
What the problem is, is bad governance
and the legacy of exploitation.
If you do the maths, simple maths,
the United States has 330 million people.
China has 1.4 billion.
India has 1.3 billion.
You can fit all those countries into
the space, the geographical space, of Africa.
Therefore, Africa's 1 billion,
really, we can expand our population without
stressing ourselves too much, but no, we can't
because we live in a cultural environment
and a political environment of instability
and poor governance.
Africa is the richest endowed, minerally,
in the world.
All our wealth is in the ground.
Our wealth is in our people.
If we're so rich, why are we so poor?
Why are we not able to rise to the challenges
that we feel and we experience
on the continent of Africa?
Why does everyone look at Africa as this poor place?
This place that is constantly subject
to environmental stresses, subject to conflict,
unable to respond to its own problems?
The problem is there's too much leaving
the continent, and not enough retained
and not enough value added on the continent.
We have corrupt leaders that are extracting
our wealth through illicit outflows,
up to the tune of over trillions of dollars.
But these people don't operate on their own.
They operate in cahoots with people
all over the world.
When we do a global comparison of generated wealth,
we find on the right there the developed world.
The GDPs, 6 trillion, 7 trillion,
Brazil, Indonesia, 10, United States, 34 trillion.
India, China.
Africa is sitting on 3.3.
But the world economies think that Africa,
in the next 30 years, 20 to 30 years,
will be operating on a GDP of 29 trillion
only if we can stop illicit outflows
out of the continent, add value in continent
and
put in place better governance.
Africa struggles with a legacy of slave trade
with colonialism, the Cold War,
forced labor camps, extraction of our wealth,
degeneration of the traditional moral fiber
of our society, with preferences
for Eurocentric lifestyles,
the culture of blinding political corruption.
Sometimes we're so shocked at the amount
of abnormal wealth that is extracted out
of our government coffers.
The numbers keep rising.
Mass injection of returned and rescued slaves
forced on indigenous communities.
Wars caused by abnormal boundaries.
Conflict between returned slaves and Indigenes.
After our independence, there's a continued
quest for the mineral wealth of Africa.
There are numerous governance and infrastructural,
logistical issues in Africa.
Poor civil service structure and capacity.
Low expenditure on science and technology.
This is the bane of our problem.
All the medical schools, all the high institutions
of research complain that the governments
don't understand, they don't appreciate
the budget that needs to go into science
and technology.
Poor rural and urban planning.
Dependency on foreign grants and aid.
A continent so wealthy still depends
on foreign grants and aid.
Communication is expensive, transportation is expensive.
We can't even move from one country to another
in Africa without getting visas.
It's like saying you want to go from Texas
to California, and you require a visa.
I as an African need a visa to go
to another African country.
These are the problems we grapple with.
Power supply is erratic and insufficient.
Yet, we're the hotbed of emerging
and re-emerging infectious diseases.
The historical perspectives in Africa
have created chaos.
They've arrested our renaissance
and they've stunted our growth and eliminated
our resilience.
The Atlantic chattel slave trade commenced
in the 15th century with devastating effects.
I'll define what chattel is because
I actually only understood it recently.
It is estimated that between 16 and 20 million
young, productive members of the
African society were extracted from mainly
West Africa over a period of 400 years.
This was soon followed by 150 years of colonialism.
Now we're living in the era of neocolonialism.
This diagram just shows you where
the points of extraction really were,
from the tip of Senegal to the Bight of Biafra,
going down into the Congo and Angola.
These are where the slaves were taken to,
to South America, to the Caribbean
and to North America.
What were these definitions?
I think it's important for us to understand
what we mean when we talk about slavery.
Chattel.
Chattel means an enslaved person who is owned forever,
and whose children and children's children
are automatically enslaved.
Chattel slaves are individuals treated
as complete property to be bought and sold.
Chattel slavery was premised on the fact
that Africans were considered to be subhuman,
like pets or work animals.
What's a Krio or a Creole?
A descendant of slaves of mixed European
and black ancestry.
Who are the Maroons?
The Maroons were Africans who had escaped
from slavery somewhere in the Americas
or the Caribbean, and who mixed with the
indigenous people of those areas.
They protected each other, and they lived
as independent and free people.
There are many example of Maroons
from Haiti to Jamaica to Suriname
in South America.
Now, Africans are a proud and organized people,
deceived and subdued by superior firepower.
Here you have the Portuguese coming in
with their ships, pretending to be traders.
Then sooner or later, using their superior
firepower, they were able to subdue
kingdoms and extract people from the continent
of Africa by force.
It's easy to dehumanize people if you
don't know who they are or where they come from.
This was the fate of these proud
and
illustrious people from Africa.
They were subject to harsh conditions,
planting sugar in the Caribbean,
and planting cotton in the
southern states of America.
What's the impact of slavery on Africa
and America?
In Africa, it meant significant loss
of nation builders.
Most of the people taken were young,
strong males.
Communities were emotionally devastated
because they were disrupted.
The Europeans came with weapons, and they traded
weapons for slaves.
That corrupted the moral fabric of our society
and our leadership.
African chiefs used these guns to wage wars
to get more slaves.
It increased in conflict that persisted till today.
Africa's social, cultural, economic development
was arrested.
On the other hand, what happened in Europe
and the Americas?
Tremendous wealth was generated.
Huge economic growth.
Sugar, cotton, tobacco.
Shipping industry boomed, job creation.
Major cities developed around the ports.
Population was booming.
It positioned Europe to colonize Africa
and set up perfect systems of extraction
to maintain economic imbalance.
Now, slavery was abolished in 1807
by Britain, who are primarily responsible
for most of the slavery, but yet they were
the main movers in the abolition movement,
based on humanitarian grounds.
But when you examine it, the only reason
why the House of Lords or the House of Commons,
who approved the abolition of slavery,
was because they realized that there was an
economic incentive.
What was that economic incentive?
There's an oil produced in West Africa
called palm oil.
By about 1800, the British were requiring
more and more palm oil to drive their
Industrial Revolution.
They realized that if they allowed slavery
to continue, there was not enough workforce
in the whole of West Africa to harvest
this oil and to produce palm oil
because it's a very labor-intensive effort.
Here you can see the palm branches
on the floor.
Indigenous people producing this product
called palm oil, which was necessary
for the Industrial Revolution.
Britain set up the Africa Squadron.
After they abolished slavery, they parked
their squadrons of navy fleet
off the coast of West Africa.
Anybody that was involved in slavery
was arrested at this point.
All the ships, the Spanish, the Portuguese ships,
the French ships who were trying to carry slaves
to the Caribbean or to America were intercepted
by the British squad.
The slaves, instead of taken back
to their point of origin, they were dropped
in a place called Freetown.
Hence, the name Freetown, of Sierra Leone.
The slaves that were arrested at mid-sea
were carried to Sierra Leone and deposited
in Sierra Leone.
Chattel slavery across Africa was enforced
by Great Britain.
The abolition was enforced by Britain,
and replaced by brutal colonialism.
This provided free labor for other
European countries.
Now, HIV.
We've tried to understand where HIV came from.
It evolved during the colonial era, and it was one
of the biggest eco, biological accidents
of all time
because it arose in the setting
of multiple factors of injustice,
medical, ethical abuse, breakdown of communities
and habitat.
The setting was the Belgian Congo
in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
We know that HIV didn't start before
the 1910 to 1940.
Otherwise, the slaves that were carried over
to the Caribbean and Americas would have
all been infected with HIV, and they weren't.
Therefore, HIV emerged after the abolition
of slavery.
It happened at a time in the Belgian Congo
where there was these brutal labor camps
that were set up for the extraction of rubber
out of the Belgian Congo, again, to drive
the Industrial Revolution in Europe.
At that time, it is estimated that
10 million people, indigenous people,
died in the Belgian Congo.
It coincided with these labor camps,
the introduction of the hypodermic needle
and the artificial experiment
that created the opportunity for HIV
to evolve out of SIV.
There is no precursor of HIV.
It was SIV, which is a primate virus
that managed to get into the human population,
probably by some unethical experience,
experiment, and it was propagated
by these circumstances that allowed HIV
to transform out of SIV.
SIV in itself is a dead-end infection
of human beings.
If you're infected by SIV, it doesn't go anywhere,
but it managed to evolve into HIV.
That's a whole lecture in itself,
but just suffice to say that HIV
was not a known pathogen until this timeframe.
The Belgian Congo is responsible
for the evolution of a pathogen that
has caused millions and millions
of infected people, and millions of people
to die from HIV and the consequences thereof.
Extensive deforestation of Africa
for the export to Europe and the rest of the world.
This is what Africa is accustomed to looking like.
Dense forests with humidity.
Good rainfall, good agricultural output.
But forests precede civilizations,
and deserts follow them.
I like this phrase.
Because this graph shows that the Guinea forest,
which extends from Sierra Leone, Guinea,
Liberia, all the way to Nigeria,
has lost 90% of its integrity
in a timeframe of a hundred years.
Our ecosystem is completely distorted
by this extraction of hardwood out of Africa.
How does poverty come about?
It's not an accident of misfortune.
There's more than enough for everyone.
But if one person wants a hundred times
their share, then 99 people must go without.
Extreme poverty is also known as the trap
because in extreme poverty, you can't get yourself
out of extreme poverty.
There is no way out of it.
You need to be released from extreme poverty.
Extreme poverty, or the trap,
is another form of genocide
because it's systematically engineered
and it has certain features.
It is an insidious, calculated process,
and not an event.
It diminishes a people's capacity to regroup
politically, emotionally and demographically.
In Africa, slavery, followed by colonialism,
followed by boundary wars, followed by neocolonialism,
and the isolation from the global corridors
of power has caused the African continent
to be merged in a poverty trap.
The poverty trap creates nations in a state
of continuous chaos.
Any of us who are from Africa know that
we live in countries that are in a state
of continuous chaos.
Either directly or inadvertently, or by neglect,
forces are unleashed on us.
Perpetual deep poverty and hopelessness
is a feeling that we are accustomed to.
As I said, it is impossible for you
to rescue yourself from deep poverty.
Let's look at a tale of two cities
to illustrate the story of biosecurity,
or bio-insecurity, as I prefer to call it,
in Africa, and why much of Africa
seems dysfunctional.
Let's look at Sierra Leone and let's look
at Nigeria, Freetown and Lagos.
Sierra Leone, small, little country.
6 million, 7 million people.
About 10 to 15 major tribes
who were put together by the British protectorate.
These tribes, which were independent nations,
were forced to live together as one country.
Sierra Leone, historically, is blessed
with gold and diamonds, and yet it's one
of the poorest countries on Earth.
It was comprised of densely
tropical rainforest.
The culture there was complex
indigenous knowledge systems.
The Portuguese started visiting early
in the 15th century, and by the end
of the 17th century, 1 million Sierra Leones
were extracted out of that area.
At that time, the population of Sierra Leone
was only 1.5, so slavery almost took
1/3 of the people out of Sierra Leone.
You can see this demographic chart,
this is the impact of slavery.
Then there's slow growth.
Then those devastating wars that I'll describe
in a minute caused a dent in the
population growth.
They recovered from that.
Then at this point, we have Ebola
and mudslides.
The creation of Freetown in Sierra Leone
happened in 1787.
There was a plan to establish what was called
London's poor black
repatriated to Africa in a place
called Sierra Leone, or Freetown.
A few years later, more than 15 ships
sailed from Halifax, just up the road from here.
By 1978, Freetown had 300 to 400 houses
with architecture resembling that
of America in the deep South.
They were joined by 500 Jamaican Maroons.
Collectively, the British, the Nova Scotia
freed slaves and the Jamaican Maroons
formed the Krio community of Freetown.
They displaced the indigenous population
up into the countryside, so thereby
setting up indigenous conflict.
The same thing was happening in Liberia,
and the same thing was happening in Lagos, Nigeria,
with returned slaves from Brazil.
For some reason, the Brazilian slaves
integrated much better in Lagos, Nigeria,
but that wasn't the case in Liberia
and in Sierra Leone.
That led to the conflict between the Krios
and the Indigenes.
The Krios are the returned slaves.
The Indigenes were the people that lived
in that area.
As a result of that, the long and short
of the story is that there was a brutal war,
which lasted 12 years
in Liberia and Sierra Leone
between the Krios, or the returned slaves,
and the indigenous people.
Of course,
the central issue was access to the
amazing mineral wealth that Liberia
and Sierra Leone have.
The diamonds fueled the conflict.
That war was responsible for 100,000 deaths,
over 100,000 amputations
and 300,000 gender-based violence incidences.
I'm not sure what it is about amputation,
removing limbs.
This happened in Sierra Leone.
It also happened in the Democratic Republic of Congo
during the brutal, oppressive regime
of the Belgian rule there.
Something about cutting off hands
and cutting of legs and cutting off
parts of people's anatomy.
Now, this war was fueled by mercenaries
from South Africa, called Executive Outcomes.
I like that name because
you make executive decisions that have outcomes
that are not based in the place
where the conflict takes place.
That's where the word blood diamonds comes from.
Because a lot of these mercenaries were paid
with diamonds, and they fueled this conflict,
which is why it went on for 12 years.
Freetown.
A beautiful part of Africa,
built on hills, very picturesque
as you're coming in from the sea.
Freetown and Sierra Leone, so rich,
but yet, many people are living in
absolute squalor.
Some of the deepest poverty that I
have ever seen, and I live in Africa.
The stage is the West African Ebola outbreak,
2013 to '16.
You all know these figures.
Thousands of people, cases.
Thousands of deaths, thousands of survivors.
10 countries affected.
Crippling our economy.
The question was Ebola typically arose
in Central and East Africa.
Why all of a sudden are we seeing
this massive explosion of an outbreak
in West Africa, where we've never heard
of Ebola before?
Ebola exposed so many issues, the good,
the bad and the ugly.
There were many disturbing events
that took place during that outbreak,
which I don't have the time to talk about today,
but we refused, as Africans, to be discouraged.
We know that, historically, Ebola
had many outbreaks in East and Central Africa.
Maximum 300, 400 people dying
before the outbreak comes under control.
We know quite often what the precursor event was.
This outbreak in West Africa came
as a bit of a surprise to us.
Now, Ebola is classified as a Category A pathogen.
Usually, Category A pathogens are easily spread.
They have no treatment.
They have high mortality and they have
a potential for causing major disruption
and economic collapse.
You're supposed to keep dangerous pathogens
in high-containment facilities,
BSL-3 or 4.
BSL-1 and 2 are where you do simple work
on simple, non-dangerous pathogens.
But if you're gonna be managing things
like Ebola and anthrax, then you want
to be doing that in a BSL-3 or BSL-4.
Now, in Africa, we have Lassa fever,
we have Rift Valley, we have Ebola,
we have Marburg, anthrax and monkey pox.
But yet, we don't have any biocontainment facilities.
The hotbed of emerging pathogens that
are classified as Category A, and yet
we don't have the infrastructure or the
human capacity to deal with them.
An epidemic was unfolding in rural
Sierra Leone and Guinea.
There were many conspiracy theories.
Was this an attack on Africa?
Was it a depopulation agenda?
This is the map of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.
The outbreak happened around there.
Right next to that outbreak is a place
called Kenema.
Kenema is a hemorrhagic fever laboratory
that has deep collaborations with the
United States of America.
Obviously, the conspiracy was
that this was something that was planted
in the society, not a natural event.
Luckily,
to debunk the conspiracy theories,
there was some samples that were kept
from 2009
from a Lassa fever outbreak in Sierra Leone.
Those samples were re-tested.
Now they were re-tested, and the surprise
was that as far back as 2009, we were finding
evidence that some of these hemorrhagic events
were not caused by Lassa, but were actually
caused by Ebola, and even Marburg.
There's evidence that Ebola and Marburg
existed in West Africa.
This was further corroborated by the fact
that a vet did a post-mortem on a gorilla
that died in the Tai National Park
in Ivory Coast, which is next to Liberia.
That vet caught Ebola from the gorilla.
That means that Ebola did exist in West Africa,
and it wasn't something that was alien
to the environment.
It's alleged that on the 23rd of December in 2013,
a group of small kids were playing
near a burnt tree that housed
a bat colony at the village.
What I want you to notice is the bareness
of this hill here.
That hill was part of the Guinea forest.
You notice that there are no trees on it.
Completely deforested.
These kids are playing around
and
catching bats,
which they would roast and they would eat
these bats.
One of those kids developed a sickness.
Of course, they didn't know what to do
with this child.
They called in the traditional healers.
The traditional healers did their
traditional rites.
The traditional healers became unwell.
The traditional healers, even though you
are talking about three countries, Guinea,
Sierra Leone and Liberia, the people that live
in this region don't know boundaries
because they're all one people.
They move across boundaries without visas.
Traditional healers came from Sierra Leone
or Liberia into Guinea
to treat these cases of Ebola.
Then they would go back into their country
having been contaminated.
Here we have a WHO's
cartoon
placement of how the outbreak was spread.
I put here the map of the East Coast of America
just to show you the comparison.
If you had an equivalent outbreak
that was emerging like it was emerging now,
events happening all across the East Coast
of America, how would you cope?
How did we cope?
Well, we didn't.
It was devastating.
Before we knew it, it had spread
to many countries.
It spread internationally.
That was the first time Ebola
had done that.
Why did Ebola spread so rapidly in three countries
and beyond?
Well, the first thing was the profound poverty
of that area and the lack of human resources.
The centuries of instability, war and conflict.
The lack of manpower.
Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea
are one of the poorest countries in the world,
despite their enormous mineral wealth.
As the epicenter was a very remote location
and Ebola was unheard of in West Africa,
the clinical features were atypical.
We didn't have the experience of managing
Category A pathogens.
Lack of specialized infrastructure.
That shows you the kind of poverty
in Sierra Leone.
Obtaining water from such sewage-ingested streams.
Typically, we were expecting to see hemorrhage
from the mouth or from mucous membranes,
but in the West African outbreak,
we didn't see much hemorrhage.
We saw more diarrhea and vomiting.
For three months, we were foxed.
We thought this was cholera or typhoid
or some kind of other infection.
In that three months' timeframe, this pathogen
was spreading across different countries.
Look at how we were able to manage
the early cases of Ebola, in sheds
that were built in the open air
because we just didn't have the infrastructure.
This was across West Africa, even in Nigeria.
Until we had developed these very sophisticated
what were called ETUs, or Ebola Treatment Units,
people were managed in the open,
thousands of people.
This was the kind of scenes that we experienced
during the Ebola outbreak.
Lots of lamentation.
Civil unrest.
Physical violence.
Trauma against each other.
The bereavement.
Human beings in Africa are not accustomed
to people dressed in gowns coming into
their homes, wrapping up their dead
and taking them up, and they'll never
see them again.
Ebola spread to Lagos, Nigeria,
and across the globe.
What are the historical perspectives of Nigeria?
Nigeria
was created in 1960.
200 million people now, but 250 distinct tribes
forced to live as one country.
Here, we just have an idea of what these tribes are.
There are a lot more tribes, but these
are the main tribes.
The British forced these tribes into one country.
As a result of the attempts to break apart,
in 1964, Nigeria fought a very bitter war,
the Biafra Secession War.
Subsequently, Nigeria's being governed
by the three leading power brokers
in Nigeria.
There's the Hausa-Fulani tribe,
the Yorubas and the Igbos.
The political game is to rotate power
between these three main power brokers.
But the source of conflict in Nigeria is resources.
Now, the desert is encroaching on Nigeria.
The Sahara Desert is moving south.
We're wondering how to break the cycle
of food crisis.
We have many non-state actors in Nigeria.
You've heard of Boko Haram.
You've heard of Al Qaeda and ISIS.
There's the Niger Avenger Deltas,
or Niger Delta Avengers.
The cattle herding conflicts
and the indigenous people of Biafra.
Now we've got a pandemic of kidnapping.
Nigeria is water stressed, the north of Nigeria
is water stressed because the Lake Chad here,
on the edge of Nigeria, is contracting significantly.
This is what the lake was supposed to look like,
and this is what it looks like now.
These are the forces, the environmental forces,
that are causing this lake to contract.
When you go from 1963, where you've had
this full lake, which is almost the size
of a whole country, down to about now,
where this lake is down to almost
a little piddly pool.
You're wondering this whole environment
was dependent on this lake,
and all of the sudden, there's no more water.
That creates stress in the environment.
The government of Nigeria is wondering how
to cope with this stress.
This is what it looked like then.
This is what it looks like now.
The Sahara Desert, which is above
this green belt, is moving south
all the time.
We're trying to build this green belt of trees
to retard this migration of the Sahara,
but it's not working.
As a result, there's conflict between
cattle herders and people.
There's the Boko Haram.
People think that Boko Haram is a religious sect.
Yes, they have a religious basis,
but it's all about resources.
Then, Nigeria, who is very rich in oil,
what have we done with our oil?
The oil has been a curse for us
because it's polluted much of the area
where the oil is being produced.
Look at this kind of pollution into the environment.
This is happening on a daily basis.
The big oil producers have been held responsible
for these kind of environmental
poisoning with crude oil.
We had an activist called Ken Saro-Wiwa,
who was opposing this kind of
reckless extraction of oil
in the southern states of Nigeria.
He came against the mighty force of the military
establishment at the time, and he was found guilty
of treason, and he was hanged.
That was the end of Ken Saro-Wiwa
and his plight for the people of the
Delta region of Nigeria.
That's his son, who tried to carry on
his legacy, but he also
demised.
As a result, we have the Niger Delta Avengers.
These are just examples of how
competition for resources and lack of good governance
is setting up non-state actors,
who are likely to be the people that
will use biological weapons or chemical weapons
as a state or as an act of aggression.
In the background of post-colonial conflicts
and the scramble for resources,
there are a plethora of expanding African
megacities with these features.
Wholly planned and governed, urban and suburbia.
They have poor regulation of their entry ports.
They lack necessary infrastructure to cope
with the population growth.
There's insufficient water sanitation
and sewage management.
The air is toxic, the streams are dying.
There's chemical and sewage pollution
on the surface of the,
of the surface water table.
There's severe pollution of the sea.
There's lack of security.
We have a lot of stressed people.
Our cities are now beginning to expand
across the continent.
This is what they're looking like.
Unplanned.
People just moving in from the rural communities
and building.
These are what our streams are beginning
to look like.
Full of pollution, dead to all kind
of living organisms.
We're producing too much toxic air
into the environment.
Our sea coasts are beginning to look like this.
Lots of plastic, lots of debris.
You can't even go out into the sea
on the major cities for recreation anymore
without encountering this kind of pollution.
No regulation of emissions
in these cities.
We're beginning to see brown smog and fumes
and the smell of gasoline in the cities.
In this setting, Ebola moved from Liberia
to Nigeria, to the capital,
or the commercial capital, Lagos.
This is the other picture of Lagos.
I showed you the first picture,
which was the nicer picture,
but Lagos is 23 million people.
Overall population of Nigeria is 200 million.
23 million people live in Lagos.
When Ebola arrived in Lagos, we were worried
that Ebola was going to infect this aspect
of the city.
Look at the dense number of people that live.
This is not unusual.
It's in many cities across Africa.
Now,
we know that people from West Africa
are very mobile, particularly Nigerians.
About 12,000 Nigerians fly out of Nigeria
every day to different corners of the globe.
This diagram shows how mobile Nigerians could be.
If that outbreak had taken hold of Nigeria,
and had infected or affected that
highly dense part of Lagos, then we might
have been telling a different story today.
Luckily, the index case that brought Ebola
into Nigeria was a diplomat.
He was taken to the most expensive
private hospital in Lagos, where they
soon recognized that he didn't have malaria
or typhoid, but he was actually
infected with Ebola, and he was quickly quarantined.
As a result, only 20 people were affected.
But if you are able to spread the virus
into the international
aviation network, then it could have
quite easily spread to every corner of the globe.
As African medical personnel, we realized
during the Ebola outbreak that we
as a continent are in trouble.
We have a limited capacity to respond
to biosecurity threats.
By extension, the rest of the world
is in danger.
We formed the
Global Emerging Pathogens Treatment Consortium
on the 21st of August, 2014.
We're now over 300 members.
What we do
is we're a consortium of experts,
mainly Africans, but we have deep collaboration
with people all over the world.
We have diverse skills from 54 countries.
We have offices in Nigeria, Ghana,
Sierra Leone and America.
We implement biosecurity projects.
We have projects in Sierra Leone, in Lagos.
We carry out initiatives and we train
personnel and we are engaged in
high-level advocacy.
We have expertise in a myriad of
infrastructural development, which are necessary
for infrastructure and human capacity development.
This is the hospital in Lagos,
as its state was before the outbreak.
That whole hospital has to be revamped
very quickly.
These are colonial buildings
that are almost a hundred years old
that couldn't take an outbreak of Ebola
as we saw it.
After the revamping, we had all these
makeshift tents that were prepared
for the potential of thousands,
if not millions, of people that
were going to be infected with HIV.
GET is assisting in the domestication
of the international instruments
of the biosecurity conventions.
These are some of our team members.
In this picture, we were in Sierra Leone
working on a project, trying to extract
convalescent plasma as the only form
of treatment for Ebola at the time.
At the time in Sierra Leone, we realized
that there were thousands and thousands
of samples during the Ebola outbreak
that were lying around the country
in totally unprotected facilities.
Now, I've just explained to you that
there are a number of non-state actors
operating in the region.
These facilities, you could easily just
walk into a facility.
A guard may or may not be there.
You could walk in, open the freezer,
pick out a bag of Ebola-infected samples
and walk away.
That was how easy it was.
We embarked on trying to establish
a project that would
rescue all these samples,
curate them and put them into secure environments
because those samples are very valuable to us.
We soon realized that Ebola is not Ebola
in everyone, and that there are different
categories of Ebola.
Some people get Ebola, get very sick,
and no matter what you do, you die.
Others catch Ebola, they get sick,
but they survive with reasonable healthcare.
Others have a mild illness
and doesn't warrant them even going to hospital.
Some people get Ebola, and didn't even know they got it.
We see now that
the interaction between your genes
and the virus is different in different types,
in different people.
We need to understand what those
genetic differences are, which will give us
a clue to the treatment of Ebola.
As we stand now, we actually don't have,
still, a treatment that is effective
against Ebola.
We managed to collect all these thousands
of samples that were distributed
throughout Sierra Leone.
We consolidated them into secure biobanks.
With the help of the government of Canada,
we're building a permanent biobank in Freetown
where these samples will be housed permanently
for the use of the science community
to try and understand the relationship
between man and Ebola virus.
Hopefully the outcome of that will
be the discovery of treatment options
for Ebola.
Unfortunately, we were unable to do
the same thing in Liberia and Guinea
because all the samples in those countries
were extracted by the partners that
came in to assist those countries
before we were able to implement
a sample rescue project.
These are just members of the Sierra Leone
security service.
When we're moving the samples around,
the military security agents, logisticians,
health personnel and members of the GET Consortium.
We're able to find the samples
in all these various laboratory locations,
and bring them into safe location.
We're also involved with strengthening
national legislation to cope
with the severe gaps that exist
in the laws and legislative parameters
of countries to deal with biosecurity
and biosecurity threats.
We've been embarking on biosecurity training
with some of our colleagues.
Biosecu.re, that's Piers and Kathryn,
who are members of Biosecu.re who've
been working with us to train people
in Sierra Leone on the concepts of biosecurity.
We've been able to secure the funding
for building a BSL-3 facility with a
biobank attached to it.
This was generously donated by the government
of Canada.
This is a
new type of facility.
It's a hybrid BSL-3 with a biobank.
That's BSL-2, BSL-3 and the biobank component.
One of the things we said was that
in Africa, we have energy issues.
We cannot maintain a biobank facility
or a BSL facility because of the need
for constant energy.
One of the things that is incorporated
into this hybrid design is that
the roof would be full of solar panels,
which will help to keep this facility
almost in a state of non-dependence
on national grid for its power supply.
Thereby, we'll be able to keep the samples cold
continuously, without dependence on
national grid.
We're also involved in arranging conferences
and workshops.
We have an annual conference,
African Conference on Emerging
Infectious Diseases and Biosecurity.
We've had one in Dakar.
During the outbreak, we had one in Lagos in 2016.
The last one was in Accra, Ghana.
The next one, which will be in September
of this year, will be in Freetown,
where we're going back for the first time
as an international community to see
the progress that has been made by Sierra Leone
in its ability to ramp up its infrastructure
and its human capacity development
in order to cope with an outbreak
of this magnitude.
Our focus is shifting from capacity to policy.
We're trying to influence global policy
that frame regional integrity.
We're looking at reparative justice.
Curriculum development for students
in secondary and tertiary academic levels.
We are involved in high level and grassroots
awareness raising.
We find that our policymakers, our politicians,
don't really understand global health security agenda
or biosecurity threats.
Thereby, they're not able to
divert the necessary amount of funding
into what is required for us to have secure
biosecurity frameworks and platforms.
We're hoping to develop biosecurity curriculums
for schools and universities, secondary,
universities, diplomas, masters and doctorate.
We're currently having discussions
at the tertiary, quaternary institutions
in Nigeria and in the Caribbean
to develop biosecurity programs
in the university curriculums.
We also have a book project, which is complete.
It's been sent to the editors.
It's broken down into five sections.
I'm one of the editors.
The first section was Emerging Deadly Pathogens
and the Clinical Practice,
Social Determinants of Emerging Infectious Diseases,
Global Health and Governance, Ethics and Policy
In the Context of EIDs, and the
Narrative from the Ebola Virus Disease Experience.
That book should be published
in the next month or two
from Springer.
In conclusion,
biosecurity threats have precedence
and multifactorial causes.
Slavery and colonialism created seemingly
perpetual instability on the continent,
and conflicts which we must address.
There is disordered governance, which creates
expanding cities and ecosystems
that are bio-insecure.
If we want to be sincere, we must address
these root causes.
It requires a holistic approach.
Reparation is a prerequisite
for global health security.
The Biological Weapons Convention and all
the international treaties around
biosecurity will amount to nothing if there
is not a genuine partnership based on
repairing the exploitation of the countries
in Africa.
Reparative justice holds our moral compass
to task, and insists that countries that
benefited should selflessly be involved
in a no-strings-attached reparative strategy
of the exploited regions.
These countries that I'm talking about,
these countries that I come from in Africa,
we're finding it difficult to recover
from these past events.
After such a history of plunder,
it is virtually impossible for us to do it alone.
Aid in the form that we're getting now
is simply just not good enough.
This is a slide of Sir Hilary Beckles,
who is the vice chancellor of the
University of the West Indies.
He set up a Center for Reparative Research
in the University of West Indies in Jamaica.
He describes the facets of reparation.
It is the collective recognition of the harm done
by the perpetrators on the people of Africa
and their descendants.
A Marshall-like plan to rebuild all institutions
in affected countries.
I'll explain what the Marshall Plan is
in a few slides.
A strategic alliance between the exploiters
and the exploited.
The World Bank and the IMF are not solutions.
Neither are grants, with strings attached.
It's not about money.
It's about allowing a disadvantaged people
the opportunity to recover from
sequential misfortunes.
If you're interested and you have this presentation,
you can Google this YouTube debate
on reparation for slavery, which was conducted
by the BBC.
There have been many examples of reparative justice
on people that were trapped.
The Great Depression in America in 1929.
The European Depression after the
Second World War and the Depression
of the Asia subcontinent, which were very successful.
This is the Marshall Plan.
The Marshall Plan, and this is the speech
of General Marshall, the US secretary of state
in 1947.
This was America's position for Europe
because Europe was going through a massive depression
after the Second World War.
"Break the vicious cycle of poverty,"
this is the trap,
"and restore the confidence of the people of Europe
"and the economic future of their own countries
"and of Europe as a whole.
"The manufacturer and the farmer must
"be able to exchange their products for currencies.
"Such assistance must not be on the piecemeal basis,
"but should be sustained and provide a cure,
"rather than a mere palliation."
The Marshall Plan was a partnership between
the United States and the countries of Europe
to collectively lift Europe out of depression
because Europe could not lift themselves
out of depression.
A true African Marshall Plan is therefore required
to ensure global health security.
A partnership to restore, not a series
of government agencies from the North
telling us what to do in Africa.
In the Marshall Plan, just replace Europe
with Africa.
To restore the confidence of the people of Africa,
if you like.
The American Marshall Plan for Europe
was highly successful.
The impact on Europe was instantaneous stability.
Two decades of unprecedented growth.
The same thing happened with the Asian Tigers,
Korea, Taiwan, India, Japan.
There was huge investment from the United States,
which built the Asian Tigers.
That's why they're so successful as we speak.
We're waiting for a Marshall Plan.
We've been talking about reparation
for a long time.
It comes in seasons,
but we believe that the time is right.
I just want to take this opportunity
to invite you to a one-day symposium
that we're going to be hosting
at the University of the West Indies
on the 2nd of August, where we're going
to have a one-day symposium on
Biosecurity in the Caribbean.
We feel that the Caribbean requires
an effort to raise the awareness
and the consciousness of its policymakers
towards the issues of biosecurity.
There are many vulnerabilities in the Caribbean
that need to be addressed.
What is our part, as Africans?
Don't get me wrong, apart from the
atrocities committed against Africa,
we also are holding our politicians
accountable.
But the system of exploitation was based
on corruption.
Slavery is corruption in its highest form.
Colonialism, which replaced slavery
by false labor camps, was built on
the foundation of corruption.
Neocolonialism has perfected the art
of undercover corruption.
It is impossible to put garbage into
a system and expect anything good to come out of it.
Our African political elite have lost
their moral compass.
We accept that.
We in Africa need to address that.
We need to address our politicians
that are stooges of neocolonialism,
and we need to find a solution.
A famous political activist called Chinweizu
defined or outlined some key points.
He said what predictable dangers await Africa
in the 21st century?
Is Africa equipped to evade or defeat these dangers?
Are African states
failed states waiting to implode?
What are the key feature of the global
environment that have led to these states failing,
and how will they operate in the 21st century?
What are the vital interests of the African population?
What are the global strategic conditions
for defending and advancing these interests?
What are the attributes of state security,
and how does that impact global security?
This is an African proverb, called Ubuntu.
It says, "I exist because of you."
I like this indigenous American proverb,
as well, which says, "We do not inherit
"the Earth from our ancestors.
"We borrow it from our children."
Our children
are warning us.
They're not happy.
But we could make them happy.
We need to raise our conscious to become
better custodians of each other
and of our environment.
Going to war is no longer acceptable.
We're in the 21st century.
Enabling social injustice
is old school.
Let us learn from those two indigenous proverbs.
Our time as a caterpillar has expired.
Our wings are ready on the continent of Africa.
We in Africa promise
to enforce accountable politics and fiduciary standards
on our leaders.
We're on the verge of demanding accountability.
We're going to diligently work towards
improving biosecurity and building capacity
on our continent.
We're going to curtail deforestation,
and switch to green energy.
We're gonna start planning our rural
and urban cities.
We're gonna limit our population growth
in a humane way.
In the spirit of Ubuntu, we forgive
all past atrocities, and look to a
brighter future of global harmony.
We will ignore the comments of S-H countries.
Here is the message we have to the leaders
of the developed world from Africa.
Please stop looking at Africa as poor.
Our stolen wealth has built empires.
Stop calling Africa corrupt 'cause you can't
get more corrupt that stealing human beings,
dehumanizing them, and ransoming whole countries
and setting up systems that perpetrate extraction.
Stop accepting billions of stolen wealth
from African despotic leaders into your
great banking institutions.
Stop making rules in the capitals of the West
that affect us in Africa without our involvement.
Stop calling reparation aid,
and attach strings to your support,
reminding us of how accountable you are
to your taxpayers,
while you refuse to acknowledge
our calls for blood tax.
Commit to a grand Marshall Plan for Africa
and its diaspora to recompense and repair
the damage of 500 years of brutal exploitation.
Accept that there were major atrocities
committed against sovereign rights
of the African people that crippled
their projected growth and development.
Just simply say "sorry."
We haven't receive a sorry yet.
Stop your clandestine security excursions
into Africa.
We're not out to get anyone.
We just want to live in peace.
Africa has finally woken up,
and our renaissance is in full swing.
Africa is rising.
I'm gonna take this opportunity to invite you
to the Fourth African Conference
on Emerging Infectious Diseases.
I thank you for your attention.
(audience applauds)
(woman speaks too low to hear)
- Hi, my name's Nia.
Thanks for your presentation.
Especially when you have loads of conclusion,
those were fantastic, but that the rule
of the system is in such a shape,
I don't know what mechanism you have.
You have your vision, but I don't know actually
how are you going to handles those
corruption and handle those partnership
who are for their benefit,
rather than for your benefit.
I just wonder what specific plan
that you think you can implement
to make it successful?
- The general attitude in Africa
is non-involvement in politics.
Politics is for politicians.
We'd normally say that the people that get
involved in politics are the dropouts in school.
Academics
have resisted involvement in politics,
but that paradigm is changing.
We recognize that you cannot be an armchair critic
of a government if you're
reluctant to get involved in governance.
More and more, we're seeing academics
vying for positions now in government,
for presidents, for governors,
so that we're injecting
academia into the policy streams
of our countries.
It's beginning to work.
We're now beginning to see governments in Africa
that are being held accountable
by the people that are being elected,
and setting up independent panels
that are going to adjudicate
over corrupt practices.
We know what's wrong in Africa.
We're not hiding the fact that our politicians
are corrupt
as sin.
We know that.
But they are enabled externally.
You can't be corrupt on your own.
You've got to steal that money
and put it somewhere.
You've got to be enabled.
We're asking you to stop that enabling environment.
We will deal with our politicians.
But if they can't siphon their money
out of the continent,
they've got to keep it in Africa.
Then we can hold them accountable.
Governance and the interest in people
getting into politics is changing.
I myself am getting interested in politics,
and I'm encouraging all academics
to participate in politics.
They think politics is a dirty game.
Yes, it is a dirty game, to some extent,
but the only way you can change it
is to get involved.
We're seeing more and more enlightened people,
we're seeing more and more academics
vying for political position.
As we see that, we're seeing the landscape
transforming slowly, and people holding
their leaders accountable to delivery.
I hope that addresses your question
to some extent.
Sorry.
- I thought that your proposal
for a Marshall Plan-style initiative
in Africa was very interesting, but I
was just wondering whether or not
you would wanna put emphasis on
financial support from developed countries
or actual initiatives that help combat
some of the issues that you presented?
- What did they do with Europe?
It wasn't financial.
Well, of course, there's always money involved,
but it was a partnership.
There was an exchange of information.
There was an exchange of technology.
There was almost like a mentorship
to raise the capacity.
It wasn't a business venture.
It was a genuine partnership.
It wasn't aid with strings attached.
It was we want Europe to be a bonafide
trading partner of America.
You can't trade with us if you are in
a poverty trap.
We're gonna elevate you out of a poverty trap.
In Africa, we don't know what those
dimensions would be.
Of course, Africa is not Europe,
but there are the political scientists
and there are the economic scientists
who can figure that out if we
come to the table and understand that what
we've been doing up to date has not worked.
Therefore, we need a new paradigm shift.
We need a new effort.
Africa has not received
any form of reparative justice.
Aid is not reparative justice.
- [Man In Green Shirt] Thank you.
- This is a comment rather than a question.
One of the aspects of the Marshall Plan
that doesn't get much attention
was a very large productivity program
that brought thousands of Europeans
to the US after World War II
to see how things worked.
It was very much a partnership program,
and American industry cooperated quite well
to show the Europeans, and from other
countries, as well.
Very hard-working missions that came over,
spent six weeks, didn't go shopping.
(laughs)
They looked at how things worked.
Wasn't health oriented, it was mostly
industrial and agriculturally oriented.
Most people are not aware of this.
If you've already studies this, my compliments.
- I took the spin on your comment about
going shopping
because what we find is when people
go for capacity development, the wrong people
are chosen to go from Africa
to America or to Europe or to Asia
to learn skills.
That's our duty to choose the right people.
But your comment is very valid.
We don't know how best to develop
this Marshall Plan.
We would like to sit around the table
and everybody put their heads together,
and define and design a Marshall Plan for Africa.
Everybody, as a partnership.
If we send the wrong people for capacity development,
then that's our problem.
Then the Marshall plan is doomed.
We've got to be ready for the Marshall Plan, too.
- These study tours brought people,
and this is 1948, so it's a long time ago,
but they brought everyone, union people,
legislators, regulators, bankers.
A very broad cross-section.
Foremen, factory foremen, too,
to see,
for these tours.
They were given quite a broad-ranging experience.
They'd look at farms, they'd look at
distribution networks, banking, regulation,
the whole structure of the sector,
which is roughly what you're describing.
- I believe that The Center for Reparative Research
in Jamaica and other centers
in Africa will be in a position to try
and figure out
what facets and what aspects of this
Marshall Plan, what it should look like.
I don't think that we can come to the table
and start discussing what it's gonna look like
until there's an agreement that
there is a need for a Marshall Plan.
I think that's the first objective.
There is a need for a Marshall Plan.
If we're denying it, then
we just need to keep advocating
because there is definitely a need
for a type of Marshall Plan to lift Africa
out of the state that it finds itself in,
for no reason
of its own fault.
(audience applauds)
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