Open letter to all Africans/Kemites This is an open letter to all Africans/Kemites and to all our friends who are open to giving a contribution towards the realization of an upcoming ceremony for the awarding of the first ever CHEIKH ANTA DIOP International Prize for outstanding scholarship and science, which is to be held on the 3rd and 4th of October in Brussels, Belgium. The Black African World is the foundation and intellectual ground for the invention of science. But it now represents just 1.7% of the world’s scientific output. This is a real paradox which explains, among other things, that our generation could not really rise to the occasion and meet the intellectual, political and economic challenges facing Africa today. Now, our generation has no choice but to meet this challenge by agreeing to train rigorously, and get to work, by applying the knowledge received from our training, and by putting that training to the service of our collective development. C.A. Diop had taken care to inform us that: Our generation is out of luck, so to speak, in the sense that we cannot avoid the intellectual storm; like it or not, we will have to take the bull by the horns to rid our minds of the intellectual formulas and fragments of thought, to engage resolutely in the only truly dialectical path toward the solution of the problems that history has imposed upon us. This requires active research, in the truest sense, of lucid and fruitful minds, capable of proposing effective solutions and realizing them without intellectual guardianship (...). “Historical circumstances now demand of our generation that it solve in a felicitous manner the vital problems that face Africa, most especially the cultural problem. If we do not succeed in this, we will appear in the history of the development of our people as the watershed generation that was unable to insure the unified cultural survival of the African continent; the generation which, out of political and intellectual blindness, committed the error fatal to our national future. We will have been the unworthy generation par excellence.” (Diop, C.A., Les fondements économiques et culturels d’un Etat fédéral d’Afrique Noire, Paris, Présence Africaine, 1974, p.12). To remedy this, African elites are encouraged to proceed with the creation of research facilities and the development of researchers; ones who are likely to promote intellectual engagement and techno-scientific creativity. Once installed, these new structures will facilitate the promotion of positive emulations by Africans world-wide and the development of a new image of the continent of Africa in general. The establishment of the CHEIKH ANTA DIOP International Prize is a step - probably still inadequate, but promising - in the right direction. It allows us to enhance our scholars and reward their intellectual effort publicly to the visibility of our leading researchers and their greater academic collaborations, implementation of projects, research programs, and specific projects that are helping in the development of Africa by creating objective conditions for Africa’s reconstruction. In honoring our esteemed African scholars, we in turn bring value to their research centers as well. This award focuses on the ethics of sacrifice and the virtue of self-denial, at the same time it allows for the launching of programs and publications with a programmatic purpose, whose sole rationale is to halt Africa’s underdevelopment. . . with the use of other analytical tools and perspectives. While acknowledging the forecasts of international organizations that Africa is, after China, the continent of growth, it is necessary to prepare the elites that will accompany this change by making advanced research based development. The creation of the CHEIKH ANTA DIOP International Prize, dedicated to top African scientists, aims to financially help researchers, in each calendar year, with the highest award for showing a positive image of Africa; an Africa that is able to participate in the development of global research; an Africa now competitive, inventive, clever, and capable of correcting all of the severely disadvantageous statistics concerning its son and daughters. To enable us to meet this challenge, we look to all Africans, or Kamites, that inhabit the Earth. Thus, we ask everyone for a contribution of 10 EUR (IBAN: BE66 0634 1891 4743, BIC: GKCCBEBB) [$13.13 U.S dollars] to make possible the practical organization of this first inaugural ceremony for the CHEIKH ANTA DIOP International Prize. We appeal to you, oh land of Gabon from which the scholar Gregory Biyogo was born, who is the first recipient of this award; a man of many hats, the Shepherd of Being, the Shemsu Maât, including the revenue, which correspond to the regulatory concepts of his thoughts. We petition Africans from the Democratic Republic of Congo, which spawned one of the pioneers of Black African literary thought in the person of Professor Mufuta Kabemba, another recipient of this award, who we call—with respect, love and gratitude—mulongeshi wa balongeshi (the professor of professors). We also appeal to all Africans on the mother continent and all of the Diaspora; to all free spirits who are respectful of science. May you, O Mother Earth, who produced two Eminent African Academics and Scholars, the recipients of the CHEIKH ANTA DIOP International Prize, this kind of widows mite without which it would be difficult to fill the blessings of consecration! Pan-Africanly | Prof KALAMBA Nsapo
Posted on: Wed, 03 Sep 2014 08:00:57 +0000
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