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Join on Telegram Rabat – Five years since its creation, the Africans Rising movement is celebrating its fifth year of activism. In a bid to reclaim the meaning of African liberation day, African social movements started on May 25th, 2017, to join in a pan-African movement of individuals, organizations, and movements, Africans Rising, to fight for a peaceful, just, and united continent.
In an interview with Morocco World News, Marie Helene Ndiaye, the coordinator of the artistic activism project at Africans Rising said that African social movements will gather on August 29-31st in Arusha, Tanzania. They will gather to return to “where it all started” in an effort to assess the movement’s achievements over the past five years and set a 5 to 10-year vision.
Africans Rising is the fruit of the first validation conference of the All-African Movement Assembly (AAMA) which gathered 272 Africans from 40 countries and diaspora members to “amplify the voice of Africans,” fight for the “right to peace, social inclusion, and shared prosperity,” as well as “foster Africa-wide solidarity,” according to Ndiaye.
Led by African activists, AAMA’s previous mandate aimed to create a “kind of African civil society,” Ndiaye told MWN, adding that the organization helped social movements across the continent to achieve their objectives, by reinforcing their voices and interconnecting their struggles.
Africa’s top priorities
With solidarity being at the core of the previous mandate, and potentially the future one, AAMA focused on promoting women’s rights and freedoms, climate justice, the right to equity and dignity, as well as the support of good governance and democracy. The assembly further prioritized the fight against corruption and the expansion of an African space for civic and political action.
While these topics remain key priorities within African societies, Africans Rising organized six meetings of African individuals and organizations present on the continent and within the diaspora. The events provided them with an opportunity to voice their concerns ahead of the assembly and share ways to consolidate their partnership with Africans Rising.
The Moroccan capital Rabat has hosted in virtual-form the North African meeting, which saw the participation of members from Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, and Sudanese civil society. Prior to the meeting, staff members from Africans Rising such as Ndiaye paid a visit to Moroccan social movements and organizations to learn more about their history, structure, priority areas, and achievements. The pan-African movement has 43 Moroccan members.
“The aim of my visit is to expand our actions there in Morocco,” she added.
Marie Helene Ndiaye with members of the Moroccan association, “Mains Libres”
According to Ndiaye, Moroccan civil society has worked to revise women’s status in the 2004 family code, as well as addressing gender issues such as gender-based violence, forced marriage, and early marriage. The fight against school drop-outs and the push for a child labor age limit to 18 are additional issues of great importance in the Moroccan context in particular, and for African society as a whole.
To address these issues, “We are supporting them most of the time technically in amplifying their voices, in interconnecting their struggles, in also linking them up with patrons that we know but also in organizing solidarity missions,” Ndiaye explained.
Deploying art for activism
Besides providing technical and financial support to African social movements, Africans Rising co-created an artistic activism project with ActionAid Denmark to encourage youth to participate in addressing social and political issues.
Ndiaye highlighted that the project aims to “test artistic activism as a tool, as a way to engage young people who are disengaged towards social and political issues.”
Mural designed on the sidelines of the Alternative World Water Forum (FAME 2022) in Dakar, Senegal
Launched in Ghana and Senegal in 2019, the pilot program has expanded to Central and East Africa, building an African Creative Action Network (ACAN) to promote artistic activism across the continent and engage youth in society and politics.
“Truly speaking the network is helping us a lot in engaging young people who were disengaged,” the project coordinator told MWN.
Annually, the program trains 20 new artist-activists in line with the methodology of its artistic activism curriculum developed in the first project-related gathering in Ghana.
With artistic activism currently representing a “main tool of Africans Rising engagement,” Ndiaye said, ACAN has created an “important repertoire” on climate justice, women’s rights, and freedom of speech in numerous African countries such as Cameroon, Chad, Togo, Gambia, Mauritania, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
Petola Kin means “Clean up the city” in one of most spoken local language in DRC
As ACAN’s presence expands across the continent, Ndiaye plans to cooperate with Moroccan artists to introduce Africans Rising, AAMA, and artistic activism to the North African country.
“I would like to really promote artistic activism in Morocco,” Ndiaye said, as she noted that ACAN is “open to everyone.”
