The Marcus Garvey Institute for Human Development (MGI) which is founded and chaired by the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey’s sole surviving son, Dr. Julius Garvey, is pleased to announce its partnership with the Center for Global Africa (CGA), which was founded and chaired by Professor Ezrah Aharone.
This new alliance recognizes that Marcus Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in Jamaica in 1914 with plans of establishing industrial schools, based on the HBCU “Hampton-Tuskegee Model” of Booker T. Washington, who exchanged letters and invited Garvey to visit Tuskegee University. Garvey also admired Washington’s “self-made man” and “philosophy of self-sufficiency.” Garvey arrived in America as a Jamaican immigrant in 1916, and through his own self-styled leadership and Pan-African ingenuity, he remarkably birthed the largest Africa-Diaspora movement in American history, exceeding 4 million Black people on four continents.
- Advertisement -
This alliance also comes amid today’s growing mainstream popularity among U.S. institutions to strengthen Africa-Diaspora relations, which contrasts with the historical impeding of such Africa-Diaspora unity, which precipitated Marcus Garvey’s unjust imprisonment and deportation in 1923.
Based on reparative justice, the partnership therefore aims to infuse contemporary Africa-Diaspora engagements with the originality of Pan-African purpose and practices of Garveyism, in alignment with the sovereign work and precepts of Dr. Martin R. Delany and other unsung Africa-Diaspora personifiers of Pan African ideals and leadership.
The partnership builds upon the CGA’s strategic partnerships and global operations that include the African Union (AU) and advancing Agenda 2063. Agenda 2063 is the AU’s 50-year development blueprint that incorporates the involvement and expertise of Africa’s worldwide Diaspora, which the AU now designates as Africa’s “Sixth Region.”
“Professor Ezrah’s work on sovereignty and connections to the AU and APRM through the Center for Global Africa provides structural frameworks for two-way channels to operationalize the Sixth Region and a 21st-century Pan-African agenda that mirrors the aspirations and actions of my father’s movement,” said Dr. Julius Garvey.
Being a visionary, Marcus Garvey devised an Africa-Diaspora template with precedent-setting work that included the “Declaration of the Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World,” a precursor of today’s Human Rights and United Nations Proclamations; the Universal African Black Cross Nurses; The Negro World newspaper with over 20,000 subscribers; the Universal African Motor Corps; and the Negro Factories League. Most notably, the Black Star Line, a fleet of ships for international trade and transportation, symbolized Pan-African thought, global economic self-sufficiency, and shared Africa-Diaspora development.
According to Dr. Julius Garvey, “The Red, Black, and Green liberation flag that my father created is a cherished symbol throughout the Diaspora and is a common color scheme in African flags today, and his Black Star brand was adopted as the name for Ghana’s shipping line and football team. Garveyism influenced Africa’s political independence movements. It influenced African presidents like Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, Nnamdi Azikiwe and Nelson Mandela. And regarding the AU, it influenced the founders of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), which is the predecessor of the AU, which now in full circle, formally embraces the Diaspora.”
The partnership is therefore committed to sustainably advancing Africa-Diaspora interests through Garvey’s Pan-African philosophy and practices. Focus will center upon building alliances with domestic and international public and private sector investment partners, launching infrastructure, educational and cultural campaigns in furtherance of common Africa-Diaspora agendas, the AU’s Agenda 2063, the UN’s Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and development priorities of African Host Nations for reciprocal Africa-Diaspora progress.
“Along with embracing the Diaspora as the Sixth Region, the AU has also deemed 2024 as the ‘Year of Education,’” according to Professor Ezrah Aharone. “This provides our institutional partners and network of scholars opportune moments to recognize Garvey’s unique bridging of Pan-African relations. The fact alone that he globally inspired and mobilized millions of African people, without modern technology, deserves study in and of itself. It confirms obvious commonalities and practices that Dr. Garvey and I look to re-galvanize in 21st-century ways through expanded partnerships.”
