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Commonwealth Secretariat press release

Commonwealth Secretary-General Urges Action to Halt Africa's Decline

28 July 1995

Commonwealth Secretary General Emeka Anyaoku said today that Africa had entered a vicious economic cycle from which it could not break out on its own. He also appealed to intellectuals in Africa and throughout the diaspora to work with governments to try to halt the continent's marginalisation in world affairs.

Chief Anyaoku was giving the annual Emancipation Lecture before the Confederation of African Associations of Trinidad and Tobago in Port of Spain. He issued a stark warning that political instability and divisivie tendencies would increase as long as Africa's socio-economic development remained retarded.

He said: "It is now accepted on all sides that the 1980s were a lost decade. If the present trend of affairs is allowed to continue, I do not see how sub-Saharan Africa can avoid losing the decade of the 1990s as well."

The Commonwealth Secretary-General said that 150 years after emancipation, the legacy of  slavery, colonialism and racism remains.  "The most enduring of that legacy has been the failure of most Africans and peoples of African descent to achieve total psychological and intellectual emancipation."  Only when this had been accomplished would their "rendezvous with victory" be assured, he said.

 

95/32 28 July 1995

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