If the coronavirus pandemic underscores anything, it is the absolute necessity for African people to unite in our historic mission to once again become a self determining, self-governing people.
A united, socialist Africa under the leadership of the African working class would secure the health, well-being and dignity of African people everywhere. African people, under such a government, could use the resources of Africa, both human and material, to protect African people and defeat the colonial coronavirus.
As of this writing, almost 15 million people worldwide have contracted COVID-19, the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
The United States has by far the greatest number of confirmed cases and deaths with nearly 4 million and 143,000 respectively.
The U.S. case numbers are alarmingly and unnecessarily high and African people are the hardest hit.
According to a July 7 report from the APM Research Lab, 70 of every 100,000 (at least 28,325) African people have died from COVID-19, the highest ratio of any group in the country. In fact, when adjusted for age, African people in the U.S. are 3.8 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than white people.
With more than 2.12 million cases and 80,000 deaths, Brazil is right behind the U.S. in terms of its COVID standing. Brazil has the second largest population of African people in the entire world, with only the neocolonial territory of Nigeria home to more African people.
While much of the continent of Africa has been spared the direct effects of high rates of COVID infections, neocolonial South Africa, or Occupied Azania has not. After India and Russia, South Africa is next and is currently 5th in the world in terms of COVID infections and deaths.
In the UK, African people are up to four times as likely to die from COVID-19 complications as white people.
No government anywhere is working explicitly to meet the health care (or any other) needs of African people, so it is for the African Revolution to assume responsibility for developing the systems and institutions that our future African government will build.
This is the essence of the political and organizational work that the African People’s Socialist Party, the African Socialist International and the Uhuru Movement have been doing for more than 50 years.
It is the African People’s Socialist Party in this era of COVID-19 that is providing the leadership that is not only giving us direction and hope, but that is building the dual power programs and institutions that are laying the foundation of the independence that we will one day enjoy!
In 2007, the African People’s Socialist Party established the All African People’s Development & Empowerment Project (AAPDEP) with the goal of collectivizing the skills that African people have around the world in order to build concrete, community programs in the areas of agriculture, education and health.
For almost 13 years now, AAPDEP has been calling on and winning African people everywhere to take up the responsibility we have to the African Nation.
As members and volunteers with AAPDEP, we acknowledge that our skills do not belong to us as individuals; rather, our skills belong to and must be used for the benefit of the masses of African people who, no matter where we find ourselves, live under the most horrible colonial conditions.
We recognize that African doctors, nurses, mental health workers, scientists, teachers and other skilled people have a role to play by contributing our skills to the African freedom movement. Not only must we build concrete programs that make an immediate improvement in the quality of life for our people, but we must recognize that the basis of our contradiction as a people is political and will require a total transformation of the economic and social realities currently confronting us.
With the establishment of the Africand People’s Socialist Party’s People’s War Campaign against COVID-19, AAPDEP has been called on to reignite Project Black Ankh (PBA), the African Nation’s emergency preparedness and response organization.
Project Black Ankh was initiated by AAPDEP in 2014, as a response to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, and was created out of the need to ensure that African people have our own, independent capacity to respond to natural and imperialist imposed disasters that impact our people anywhere.
Sierra Leone has been the location of many important AAPDEP programs, including two maternity health centers, multi acre vegetable and cassava farms, rainwater harvesting programs, a vocational school, nursery school and a variety of youth and adult educational programs.
Project Black Ankh Sierra Leone initiated a process that trained 50 community health workers on the identification and prevention of Ebola Virus Disease. We also connected with 40 Ebola survivors and their families, providing them with food, water, medicine and sanitation supplies.
In an effort to help to address the stigma many Ebola survivors experienced upon their return home, AAPDEP members worked with community entertainers to create skits and jingles that were performed throughout the community, holding up Ebola survivors as heroes and calling on the community to embrace them as such.
Since that time, Project Black Ankh has intervened in African communities in Houston in response to Hurricane Harvey in 2017. It is only now in the Era of COVID-19, however, that AAPDEP has determined to build Project Black Ankh as a permanent program, as the African Nation’s response to the Red Cross.
One of the most exciting current PBA initiatives is our COVID-19 telehealth program, an incredibly important program that allows African people anywhere in the world the ability to make video appointments with our AAPDEP medical personnel.
All appointments are free and are staffed by licensed medical professionals who offer important, potentially life-saving COVID-19 education and information. Within the next few weeks, we hope to have plans finalized for incorporating a mental health component to our telehealth program as well.
To make an appointment, please visit our website, developmentforafrica.org/telehealth. If you have questions, please feel free to email us at pbatelehealth@developmentforafrica.org
Join AAPDEP! Volunteer with Project Black Ankh!
Through AAPDEP, African people are involved in a serious process of building our own, independent health care capacity and are calling on African health care professionals who unite with our mission to join AAPDEP or volunteer with Project Black Ankh today!
Contribute your skills to ensuring that African people aren’t only able to survive COVID-19 but that we can thrive as we build the institutions and systems needed to govern ourselves.
To volunteer with project Black Ankh’s telehealth program, donate or for more information, please visit us at developmentforafrica.org or call us at 256-281-1344.
Build Project Black Ankh and defeat the colonial virus!
