LAST DAYS IN NAKED VALLEY: THE STRUGGLE FOR HUMANITY’S HOMELAND
From the terrace of the Paradise Lodge perched on an escarpment at one end of town unfolds one of East Africa’s most sublime panoramas. Two mighty Rift Valley lakes come together, separated by a thin hump of land known as the Bridge of God. To the left one admires the milk chocolate expanse of Lake Abaya, while a pivot to the right brings smaller, darker Lake Chamo into view.
As an international politics editor for one of the world’s largest news organizations, I helped reveal and explain the shaping trends of democracy and free-market economic growth taking hold across Africa.
Since then, as an Africa-based strategist on citizen-responsive democratic governance for the world’s largest development agency, I’ve studied up close the youthful awakening of this kinetic continent. My journeys and conversations with everyone from village women leaders to government ministers have inspired fundamental questions: How can we accelerate the positive trends, strengthen self-reliance and integrate Africa in the flow of global ideas, commerce and creativity?
Of the 2 billion people our planet will add in the next 30 years, half will be in African countries south of the Sahara Desert, the great geographic divide of this continent. In 2050, according to United Nations forecasts, Nigeria will replace the United States as the third most populous nation, behind India and China, and Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo will join the global top 10. Tanzania will be close behind.
No longer “developing,” these countries will be among the world’s largest markets and influences on global culture.
My travels take me from the teeming metropolises of Addis Ababa, Nairobi and Accra to villages and indigenous peoples nestled into some of Africa’s most remote terrain. This is where I live.
Join me as I show you the emerging global Africa, sharing ideas, journeys and opportunities along the way. – Edward DeMarco
On Africa and the world
I, Emperor of Ethiopia, am here today to claim that justice which is due to my people …. God and history will remember your judgement.
HAILE SELASSIE TO THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS, 1936
My fellow citizens of the world: Ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.
KENNEDY, 1961
Seeing the sun, the moon and the stars, I said to myself, Who could be the Master of these beautiful things?
JOSEPHINE BAKHITA, PATRON SAINT OF SUDAN
