“Africa
is not poor,” she says. “It was made poor.”
Dr.
Aminata Dramane Traoré is Coordinator of the Forum
for Another Mali. An influential critic of corporate globalization,
she is also a doctor of social psychology, author, community
leader, and manager of cultural events. Traoré served as
Mali’s Minister of Culture for three years before dedicating
herself to fighting unfair global economic practices..."
She organised the first
African social forum in 2002
"Another
Africa is possible!" From the social forum's Bamako
Declaration, January 2002:
..."A strong consensus emerged at the Bamako Forum that
the values, practices, structures and institutions of the
currently dominant neo-liberal order are inimical to and incompatible
with the realisation of Africa's dignity, values and aspirations..."
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"Our
priority is the debt," stated Ms. Aminata Traoré... (it) "wipes
out all our efforts for education, health and development, and
for that reason it needs to be cancelled. Then we need reparations
for five centuries of colonialism and slavery. On this basis a
new cooperation with the North could help all of us on a road
of real development."
-- From Davos to Brazil, Africa makes its case: Debt relief
and poverty reduction high among the continent's priorities. Africa
Recovery, May 2003.
Civil
society in revolt against EU-ACP trade agreements, 6 May 2005,
SouthScan, London
"African civil society organizations supported by a number
of major European NGOs have moved into clear confrontation with
the European Commission on the issue of the Economic Partnership
Agreements (EPA). They say these deals will wreck domestic African
agriculture and industry and are warning African politicians not
to go along with them...
Mali’s former minister of tourism and prominent feminist and anti-globalization
militant Aminata Traore, another leader of the ’No’ campaign,
considers that speeches praising the virtues of the EPAs are "totally
irresponsible".
In an interview with SouthScan, she warned that Europeans should
not be surprised if in the coming years as a result of more crisis
and more unemployment in Africa they see more illegal immigration
and more wars on the continent. Coulibaly agrees and adds that
if demagogue politicians are managing to recruit thugs and militias
in Cote d’Ivoire, the main reason is because the youth there have
no job prospects..."
See also Nobel laureate Wangari
Maathai's speech "Africans Can Do it for Ourselves"
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