MEDIA STATEMENT
For Immediate Release
An activist recognized by the Obama White House as a “champion of change” and a celebrated children’s author and change-maker have become the latest standard-bearers of Africans Rising for Justice, Peace and Dignity.
Africans Rising, an emerging movement of people and formations, working from below and beyond borders for Justice, Peace and Dignity, officially launches on 25 May 2017.
For nearly three decades, Eritrean activist Nunu Kidane has worked on Africa-related program and policy matters, written and spoken on issues of HIV/AIDS, refugees and migrants, human rights and racial and economic justice as relates to people on the move. Since 2006, Nunu has focused her work on issues of African immigrants in the U.S. and globally. She is editor of AfricaMoves: a Pan African Migration Platform, a founding member and serving on the Steering Committee of the Black Immigration Network (BIN) and the Pan African Network in Defense of Migrants’ Rights (PANiDMR) established in Bamako, Mali in 2010. Kidane was recognized by the White House as a “Champions of Change” receiving an award for her work with the African diaspora communities in the U.S. She is a founding-member and current Director of Priority Africa Network (PAN) an advocacy organization based in Oakland, California. She is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley.
Said Kidane: “The mission of Africans Rising – to foster unity and solidarity for the advancement of the Peoples of Africa and its diaspora – is crucial now more than ever. I am excited to be an ambassador for this mission and to help build the citizen-led movement to achieve it.”
Kidane currently serves as the Director of the Africa Priority Network.
Coumba Toure, who hails from Mali and is based in Senegal, is a leading change-maker in the areas of social entrepreneurship and youth educational development. Her activism includes writing children’s books as tools to build a community that supports young people in creating their own learning tools and social change projects. Toure also works to develop leadership amongst girls and young women. Toure has facilitating hundreds of educational workshops worldwide on gender, race, economic justice, AIDS and advocacy.
Said Toure: “It is vitally important that young Africans today understand that they have the ability to build the future they want, not simply accept the past they have inherited.”
“As a de-centralised movement, Africans Rising seeks to mobilise youth to work towards that change and I am excited to be part of the mission to support that,” said Toure.
Toure currently works with global social entrepreneurship organization, Ashoka, serving as its representative for the Sahel region.
Welcoming Kidane and Toure, Muhammed Lamin Saidykhan, Africans Rising Coordinator, said: “Africans Rising is delighted and fortunate to have Ambassadors of Nunu’s and Coumba’s calibre and experience.”
On Africa Liberation Day, 25 May 2017, Africans Rising is calling on all Africans to mark the day and the participate in the launch of the movement by:
- Wearing red, to symbolize the blood shed for our liberation and the bleeding of the continent by illicit financial actions and corruption
- Gathering in groups between 12 noon and 2pm to read out the Kilimanjaro Declaration, the founding charter, and a list of demands of changes they would like to see happen
- And turn off their lights between 19h00 and 20h00 in solidarity with the hundreds of millions of Africans who do not have access to electricity, and to light a candle to light the way for brighter leadership and governance
